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| Lean on Me |
How I Painted This . . . or . . . I Discover a New Technique |
| Monday, October 25, 2004 I had a relatively short time yesterday afternoon but I had read something in one of my Pastel Journals that I was anxious to try. The artist didn't go into detail, so I guessed about most of it. I was just going to experiment yet ended up doing an entire painting. I'm so pleased with it and can't wait to use this technique again! It really needs to be a certain type of subject. It's very exciting to me because I love a bit of sparkle and shine. I did the initial sketch of the pears (what else?) very loosely and lightly in pastel. Then I roughly put in my dark background around them. I went in with a small brush and very carefully and with minimal water went over parts of the pears. Yikes, a bit scary, but okay because, after all, I wasn't really doing a 'painting', I was just playing. Then I sprinkled gold powder pigment over the wet areas. After it was dry, I blew off the excess powder and was left with a dry and sort of glassy surface of gold in certain areas of the pears. I then proceeded to work over the gold in pastel and to finish the pears, refine the background, etc. Now I have pears with a lovely gold shimmer in the highlighted parts. I'm thrilled. Of course in the scan for the web the gold doesn't show as gold, rather as white, so it doesn't look like it does in person, but it's pretty cool.  |