I’ve received a number of questions recently from friends about the handmade papers I use and decided to add a page to my blog specifically about paper. I’ve included notes and photos of my favorite papers there. Please feel free to add your own observations or to post questions about both handmade and mass-produced papers. While I’m most enthusiastic about handmade varieties of paper, I have a large collection of paper in pads and blocks too and would enjoy any discussion on these types as well. I hope the information I’ve posted there is useful to you. And since it seemed odd to write so much about paper and not about pastels, I added another page that focuses entirely on the pastels I use. Both pages can be accessed using the links at the top of my blog.
Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (gray tone, 5″ x 7″ each) November 2009 .
A more expansive version of my recent compositions, this time in three small panels. I’ve provided larger images of each of the pastels below. Here I worked at a more restrained value range (light to dark) than the previous versions of this composition, striving for a more subtle range of neutral colors and middle values. Depending on the lighting and how closely you look at these drawings, they very easily dissolve into a dusty fog and sometimes seem to be just barely there.
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Pastel on Twinrocker handmade paper (light gray tone, 6″ x 9″) November 2009 .
Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (cream tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .
I’ve been working on more studies of Iona Island in an effort to move towards more expressive and abstracted images. These are a step in that direction but not quite there yet – more to follow.
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Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (cream tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .
Iona Island is one of my favorite spots along the Hudson River. It’s home to a bird sanctuary and beautiful marshy inlets like this one. When we visited last week it was drizzling and foggy and I barely got my easel set up when the rain forced me back to the car. I did a couple of quick sketches and took photos, and these references were what I worked from this weekend in developing this study. I hope to get back there soon to work on site but for now my references will have to do, and I have a couple of other small studies started. The color here really gave me a workout with my earth and gray pastels. More to follow…
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Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (gray tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .
For this study, I went back to drawings I had done on site of a field out on Long Island during this past summer. The late afternoon had just turned misty when we found this field and I set up beside the road and did some fast sketches. These recent 8″ x 8″ studies are fun compositional and technical exercises, especially with this highly textured paper.
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Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (gray tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .
This is the same pastel as in my previous post, and I’ve reworked the lower third of the drawing here based on feedback from a friend. She suggested lightening the most distant part of the field so that it feels more like it recedes toward the background. In the previous version, the field felt somewhat flat and the transition from foreground to background was perhaps too severe (you can scroll down to my last post to see how it looked before I made these changes). Ultimately, I think it might work better if I made the feel of the distant grass a little more similar in texture to the trees so that the transition is visually more gradual. This change, though, will need to wait until I do a new study or a larger piece since I’ve worked this one to the point where little more can be done here without making a mess of things. In any case, I welcome your thoughts and suggestions – are the changes I made an improvement?
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Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (gray tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .
I’m continuing to work through a series of pastels based on the spot in Sagano, Japan, that I wrote about in a post last week. Progressively, I’m trying for more feeling and greater abstraction with this simple composition. Here, I really enjoyed working with the texture of this beautiful handmade paper from Moulin de Larroque of France. I bought four different papers by Larroque last week, each with a coarse texture that gives the paper a great deal of character. It’s got a soft feel to it that grabs pastel well and this coupled with the texture makes it easy to layer soft pastel – a new one for my list of favorite papers.
Yesterday we visited a favorite spot along the Hudson River and I tried to get some drawing done but the weather didn’t cooperate. Hopefully, my rough initial sketches and some photos I took as the rain came down will help me do some work in the studio until we can go back there again.
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Black Conté on Cartiera Magnani Annigoni paper (8″ x 10″), October 2009.
Pastel on Twinrocker handmade paper (light cream tone, 8″ x 10″) October 2009 .
I’ve been busy with a lot of experimentation these days, and much of it hasn’t made its way to my blog yet (and maybe never will since some of it is especially rough). The drawing above in soft pastel was subjected to a lot of overworking, blending, and relayering of color as I tried to work through what it is that I’m most interested in expressing here. I’m revisiting a composition I used for a number of drawings a couple of years ago and will probably continue working through it until I arrive at some fresh interpretations that I’m excited about. While most of my drawings these days are not really specific to any location, these are based on photos I took a few years ago at Sagano in Japan, a favorite spot outside of Kyoto. The cottages set back into the woods have historical significance because the famous haiku poet Matsuo Basho stayed here for a couple of weeks in the seventeenth century. I like to imagine that the setting looked largely the same back then and can picture Basho sitting in the cottage on a quiet, balmy summer day looking out on the fields while writing haiku. A rich context for my drawings – now it’s back to work on trying to capture this feeling with pastel on paper.
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Pastel on Ruscombe Mill handmade paper (blue tone, 5″ x 7″), October 2009 .
More Whistler influence, and one of my first recent tries at a nighttime scene. This was done mostly from imagination, although I’m hoping to do more in the coming weeks with at least some of them based on sketching either outdoors or from a window in a dimly lit room.
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Pastel on Ruscombe Mill handmade paper (blue-gray tone, 7″ x 10″), October 2009 .
I’ve been studying Whistler’s Venice pastels lately and these drawings are a direct effort to incorporate some of what I’ve learned. This includes allowing the mid-value tone of the paper to substitute for applied color, use of very light “veils” of pastel, and particular focus on the area of interest. I got a little heavy in places with my pastel here. Whistler had a strong ability to get color and value correct right away with his “color notes” – for me this often requires more layering and experimentation until I arrive at what I was hoping for. The success of his drawings also has much to do with the strength and accuracy of his sketching, which he typically did in charcoal, often over light pencil lines. I brought charcoal out with me for these sketches but used pastel pencils for the initial drawings instead. It was a beautiful, crisp fall morning and a real pleasure to be working outdoors.
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