Week 6: the final furlong...?

Having enjoyed a highly productive and challenging(!) first half of the term we are now focused on our final projects. A lovely range of works below:

Anne: excellent finishing touches around the eye. Well done. 

Anne: fascinating palette. Try to make the background colder whilst keeping it as dark as it is now - to help the mushroom colours and tones really come out.

Brian: very good drawing style with just the right amount of information for painting. Look carefully at Marc's palette and then move quickly to get the first layer of colours across the whole image before developing the colours fully.

Janice: beautiful technique with soft velvet tones and subtle edges. Focus on the painting and depth of pastel on the surface from now on - you've got the drawing stage in place so focus on the painting - colour, depth of pastel, contrast of tone.

John: strong start with good response to the brown paper background helping you with the initial colour tones. The drawing stage is more or less done so move now to focus fully on the depth of pastel on the paper and the colours and tones. Keep shapes simple.

Karen: great to see you investing so much time and energy into this painting. You are really consolidating your skills and understanding of colour, tone and contrast. Focus next on the face - not the drawing just the tone contrasts and colours. Be brave - there is darkness and drama in there.

Linda: good to see this one in its final stage. Great contrast of styles between figure and landscape.  

Linda: very subtle and clever use of analogous colour and well tempered tonal relationships.  Well finished. 

Margaret: so good to see this one finished. Clever use of cool colours and a narrow palette of blues and greens. Atmospheric. 

Margaret: good start to a tricky subject. Start work on the landscape to get colours on all the white paper areas. Then revise the colours in the horse with the help of the landscape colours you use. 

Pat: very good layering of pastel to give depth maximising the light reflecting the colours.  Good blending technique but keep practising how you hold the pastel stick and how you mix fully the colours on the surface of the paper to get a fully blended layer. Move next onto the horse body by adding more varieties of reds sand browns. Mix in some orange to the horse at the end.

Val: great progress today. Now you can focus on building up the depth of oil pastels in fully blended layers. The friction of the blending will relax the oil/wax in the sticks to help spread the colour more easily on the surface.