Did this study from a photo I took during the pandemic of a delightful vehicle we occasionally saw in our old neighbourhood. A magnetar is a very, very cool and scary space phenomenon and I extremely respect naming your ancient honda accord after it.
A couple process shots to show you the underdrawing I did in the cray-pas pastels – they’re very firm compared to the rest but I was still able to blend them a bit as you can see in the second process shot.
I did this study in the heavyweight coldpress Canson XL mixed media sketchbook; I was assuming the paper texture would hold the pastel still better than the bristol I’d been using in the Bateman brand sketchbook, and I think it did, but, only for a layer or two; by the end the pastel was very slippery and I could easily lose mydrawing if I wasn’t careful.
Speaking of drawing, since cars are a real bitch to draw, I did a full underdrawing of this in pencil crayon first to nail down all the shapes and the perspective, and it def paid off. I think the drawing as a whole stayed decently strong through to the finish as a ersult of the time I put in before adding colour; I really need to do that more often.
One thing I was trying to do with this one in particular was more blending to get custom colours. I rewatched a few Yolanda Blazquez demos to see how she gets such soft customized blended skintones, and ttarted trying her soft layering/finger blending technique here. I do think it helped and I got colours on the page I don’t have in stick form! However, yolanda uses pastelmat paper and that stuff holds the pastel still better – again, at least to a point – and she’s VERY good at putting the colour right where it goes the first time. I think one of my problems is I like to work up t o the right colour, and with pastels you do end up wit h Too Much On The Page eventually. I could be more liberal with my scraping back in future, I think.
Also, fun trick, you can do a lot with pencil crayons on top of oil pastel if you press firm enough to scrape back the pastel as you draw. That’s how I did the license plate.
I’m going to do a few more studies, trying to figure out what my favourite surface for oil pastel is. I’ve got some mi-teints paper on teh table now, and lots of printmaking rag on teh shelf nearby for further tests. Figuring out how I personally like to work in oil pastel remains a very fun quest and as my right hand regains tiny amounts of precision every day I amstarting tosee some real possibilities with this medium beyond the playful angle that’s attracted me so far.
Finally, I don’t know exactly what did it, but I seem to have ended up in a very 80s advertising painting zone with this – what would you call this vibe? Either way, accidental but fun result!
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