Oil pastels with collage

Not a lot of new work has come out of my studio this week  - I missed Illustration Friday :( - but rather than not show anything at all,  I've decided to share a few colourful experimental pieces I've played about with over the last few weeks.  The above little pieces are clips created from a larger work created from small shapes torn from magazine pages with added oil pastel work.  No particular design in mind - just going with the flow....very liberating!  Thanks to Carolyn Saxby for a reminder of this process - I worked from this tutorial by Sue Dove.

Here you can see I have pasted shapes torn from magazines onto a sheet a plain paper.  I did start with  colours in mind... but then I just worked the oil pastels fairly randomly around the shapes.

this is the colourful finished page which I then flipped over and divided up by cutting into the page from the back - that way you don't know exactly where you'll be snipping!



I hope these little rectangles and squares might be inspiration for something in the future..!

I enjoyed the process so much that I had to make more!

 Sliced up sections from the original page make for interesting mini abstracts.

I pasted them into a sketchbook as reference - perhaps for future paintings or textiles.  I've used a few for little additions to handmade cards and collages.  And if they don't get used I think they make a lovely display!

If you've got a set of oil pastels I recommend you have a go!  By the way, the same exercise can be done with paint too - just layer watercolours or acrylics for similar effects!   Have a go!!



Stay tuned for more experiments with inks, watercolour and underwear next!!!!

Illustration Friday - Confined

'Confined' is this week's Illustration Friday theme. My offering is a net full of fishies - hope they escape - there are a few holes! Acrylic and oil pastel on mountboard.

Illustration Friday - Unbalanced

Mad dogs and Englishmen

I've been scraping away at oil pastels again for this week's Illustration Friday theme of 'Unbalanced. I based it on Noel Coward's song Mad Dogs and Englishmen and as he didn't mention chickens I included them too! Must admit that my illustration looks more like midnight than midday though! Click the pic above to enlarge, then click again to magnify if you want to explore!

Mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun,
The Japanese don't care to.
The Chinese wouldn't dare to,
Hindoos and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one.
But Englishmen detest a siesta.
In the Philippines
There are lovely screens
To protect you from the glare.
In the Malay States
There are hats like plates
Which the Britishers won't wear.
At twelve noon
The natives swoon
And no further work is done.
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.

etc etc !!

Week word -' Lesson' and Mim's travelling art book page

I'm going to kill two birds with one stone in this post. First off is this week's word - Lesson. Which was your favourite lesson at school? I didn't much enjoy the maths and science side, nor were sports my thing - I'm an arty gal and always have been judging by the above which I found yesterday in one of my first school exercise books - I was around six years old when I wrote that - note the star! Unfortunately, there are no paintings from that time but there are lots of little crayoned pictures that I made to illustrate my news in primary school.



Take a look at the left hand pic! A Dutch girl and boy, windmill and tulips!! Who was to know then that I'd marry a Dutchman!!

Early attempts at journaling?

See? Told you I was no good at sports!! Making pictures with wax crayons was definitely much more fun! These days I use mostly watercolour, coloured pencils and inks, but I've have recently bought some inexpensive oil pastels and started experimenting with these grown ups' wax crayons! I am used to achieving detail with fine points so these stubby little pastels are quite a challenge and have been ideal for' loosening up 'a little!

Women and birds
Oil pastels, cropped image

Today, I completed a picture with these waxy oil pastels for one of the travelling art books. This one is for Mim's book - her theme is Women around the World, so I decided to do an international crowd of girls and popped a few birds in there for good measure. Whilst I was at it I thought it might be fun to turn this into a weekword 'lesson' , so I took a few photos of the process so that I could let you see how I created this picture in oil pastels using the sgraffito technique. I quite like the end result of this process as it looks a little like a wood block print. Basically you create a design using oil pastels which is then covered with a layer of another colour and etched into. It's very exciting to reveal the underlying colours when you scrape into the top layer. I don't have a lot of patience, so am always eager to see the vibrant colours emerging with each scrape of the knife, so those of you with more patience will probably be able to plan and achieve much more detail with your scraping and scratching!





First I drew and then traced my design onto heavy cartridge paper - it's important to choose a reasonably heavy weight paper for this process as you will be scratching into it with a sharp implement to create your picture.



Next, I added small details likes eyes, mouths and beaks with coloured pencil as I knew I wouldn't be able to do that with the chunky sticks of oil pastel. I then blocked in the main colours of the design. You need to use a thick layer of colour, worked well into the paper as you have to scratch into this later.



Now you really have to be brave and rub black oil pastel all over your design!! Not too thick, just enough to cover. This shows the picture half covered - at this stage you will be having serious doubts!!



Here's the whole picture covered in black oil pastel! If you've not completely lost your nerve by now you need to retrieve the lines of your original design. Not so easy!! To help, I taped my tracing (lining up registration marks I'd made earlier) and traced over as accurately as I was able again with a stylus.

Here I am using a scalpel to gently scrape away the black pastel to reveal the design below. You can use any sharp implement at this stage - needle, pen nib, nail file, skewer, whatever! As you work do remember to clear the scrapings from your scalpel and surrounding areas frequently!!! Cover your working hand with a piece of scrap paper to protect the image - things smudge so easily!! Believe me, it is also pretty easy to overdo this scraping stage and end up with a grey mess. Should this happen, take heart, for fortunately, all is not lost! It is possible (with care) to retrieve overworked areas. Remove as much of the pastel as you can without destroying the surface (also very easily done and hence the need for a sturdy substrate!!) and paint over with a layer of gesso. Reapply your pastel base, cover again with black and try again!! If you obliterate an eye or beak try repainting with acrylic paint.

The final piece.


I liked the precision of my original design but am quite pleased with how my sgraffito oil pastel picture has turned out.

This week's word was chosen by Alexandra Hedberg. She has a list of all the other participants so do pop in to her blog to get more lessons!

Have a good weekend!

Illustration Friday - Blur

Kingfisher
watercolour and oil pastel

This week over at Illustration Friday, the word is 'Blur'. Here's my impression of a kingfisher emerging from the river with its catch! I hear these beautiful birds around here almost daily and catch fleeting glimpses of their jewel colours - almost always a blur! I would dearly love to see one close up for long enough to take a good photo.

Brown as nettle beer the stream
Shadow freckled speckled with sun
Slides between the trees
Not a ripple breaks in foam
Only the frilled hedge parsley falls
White upon the ground
No insect drills the air no sound
Rustles among the reeds
Bird and leaf and thought
Are still

When shot from the blue a Kingfisher
Flashes between the ferns-

Jewelled torpedo sparkling by
Under the bridge and gone
Yet bright as a bead
Behind the eye
The image blazes on

I like this little Kingfisher poem I found in a book of calligraphy by Janet Mehighan.

Illustration Friday - Theatre

This week's theme is Theatre (I'm using the English spelling!) - Japanese Kabuki theatre. I'm very fond of old Japanese wood block prints and this illustration was inspired by one made by Sharaku of the Kabuki actor Morita Kanya. For my version I've experimented with some new oil pastels which are quite a departure from the controllable coloured pencils, ink and watercolour I'm used to! These are so thick there's no way I can achieve any fine detail! After blocking in the colours and applying a further layer of black pastel over the whole image, I used the sgraffito technique ( scratching and scraping into layers with a craft knife) to reveal the colours beneath whilst bringing some texture to the piece. You can view a print of the original woodblock here and read more about Kubuki here.