Day 14 - Moorina (and the Australia Workshops!)

"Moorina" (pastel, 6x6 inches) click here to bid or buy

Day 14 of my 31-in-31 posted paintings for January!

Another always-popular little Hereford calf. I had this one underpainted with the Art Spectrum primers (clear and terra cotta) and their gold ochre pigment ink. I'm still playing around with method, but I really like the glow!

Speaking of an Australian based company, I've just updated my website schedule to include all of my Australian workshops coming up this summer (August/September - Australia's late winter/early spring!)

Check out my Aussie workshops here! Put one on your bucket list!

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Day 5 - Pai

"Pai" (pastel, 7x5 inches) click here to bid or buy

Day 5 of my 31-in-31 for January!

This is another that I under-painted with Art Spectrum primers and ink, see yesterday's post for more about that.

This is Pai, because that's what her tag said! :)

Here are some progress pics of Pai's portrait:

And here's my newly cleaned workstation for the new decade, all ready to get dirty tomorrow!

Day 4 - Chewy

"Chewy" (pastel, 8x8 inches) click here to bid or buy

Day 4 of my 31-in-31 for the first month of this new decade!

I pasteled this one of three under-paintings I had made with Art Spectrum primers and inks, in preparation for my workshop trip to Australia later this year. (I've made all of my supply lists for the Australia workshops strong on the Art Spectrum brand to make it easier for students to purchase!)

Art Spectrum has some new pigment-based inks and the golden ochre color is a very nice substitute for the Golden brand fluid acrylic color I had been using. I'm mixing it with the Art Spectrum clear pastel primer, and I'm still experimenting a bit, but it's been working out rather well so far!

I find that it takes a lot more of the colored ink in the clear primer to make a strong enough color for my usual layering (more than the Golden acrylic color) so I'm mixing smaller batches til I get it right. Then because I'm using more ink, the mix is thinner than I'm used to but one good side effect of that is it doesn't dry up so fast! But I did notice that it didn't seem to hold quite the same amount of pastel over the areas that were just the gold mix, so I might need to add more clear on top before pasteling. I'll experiment more with the next batch.

Here's my gold layers of the underpainting. It took about 4 layers in all:

 Here's the finished underpainting with the Art Spectrum primers and ink used: