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  • #473877
    SarahY
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        JUNE 2019 OIL PASTEL CHALLENGE!

        Happy 1st of June, oil pastelists! This month, we have three challenges – which can be tackled separately or all combined into one:

        CHALLENGE 1: NON REPRESENTATIONAL ABSTRACT!

        CHALLENGE 2: LIMITED PALETTE!

        CHALLENGE 3: LITERARY QUOTES!

        You can choose any reference you like, or work from your imagination.

        Read on for specific challenge information…

        ————————————————————–

        NON REPRESENTATIONAL ABSTRACT:
        Non representational abstract art focuses purely on the design, composition and colour. It doesn’t need a subject and painting non-rep abstract can be fun and freeing. The golden ratio/Fibonacci spiral and the rule of thirds are good starting points for non-rep abstracts. Good composition is the skeleton of any successful artwork. Closing one’s eyes and drawing a squiggle can be an excellent starting point.

        Then think about the mood, emotions, shapes. Harsh colours and sharp shapes, or muted colours and soft shapes? Composition, colours and shapes will need to be chosen carefully to get your point across without a subject. Textures are a valuable tool for creating points of interest. Oil pastel can be heated to lay on thick palette knife effects, diluted with solvent to create runs, brush marks, and washes, scratched into for sgraffito; experiment, go mad!

        ————————————————————–

        LIMITED PALETTE: No more than four sticks! Black, white, and two colours, three colours and white, three colours and black; up to you, but four sticks or less please. Colourless blenders/extenders and other colourless mediums can be used. Any colour surface can be used.
        Some ideas:
        – Black, blue, brown, and white can make some truly beautiful, subtle paintings.
        – Black, white, and a single colour can make some very stark, emotional works.
        – Red, blue, yellow, and white can make a huge range of colours and results in a very vibrant painting.
        – A dark and light of the same colour with white or black makes monotones and monotones are very good for practising values.
        – Black, white, bright red, and earth yellow comprise the ‘Zorn palette’ (named after Anders Zorn), which is an excellent palette for figure painting.

        ————————————————————–

        LITERARY QUOTES: Please post the quote you use with your painting! Feel free to choose your own literary quotes upon which to base your work, or you can use one of these I’ve chosen from my favourite books:

        “…moonlight…transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse’s mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows.”
        – Richard Adams, “Watership Down”

        “Her skin was flawless and always cool, always pale; her body was long, like her hair, like her fingers, like her laughter; and her eyes, oh, her eyes, had every season of leaf in them: the twin greens of spring and high summer, the golds of autumn, and, in her rages, black midwinter rot.”
        – Clive Barker, “Imajica”

        “An infiltration of the morning’s sun gave the various objects a certain vague structure but in no way dispelled the darkness. Here and there a thin beam of light threaded the warm brooding dusk and was filled with slowly moving motes like an attenuate firmament of stars revolving in grave order.”
        – Mervyn Peake, “Gormenghast Trilogy”

        “The “Avenue,” so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.”
        – L M Montgomery, “Anne of Green Gables”

        “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
        – Edgar Allan Poe

        ————————————————————–

        You could post a non-rep abstract, based on a quote, painted with four sticks only. You could combine two. You could just pick one to focus on. You could do one of each! The choice is yours. Please tell us the size, surface, and materials used when you post your paintings, and feel free to post studies and sketches. There’s no ‘reveal’ day, post whenever you like. That’s it, guys, happy painting! :thumbsup:

        http://www.shyeomans.co.uk
        \m/ neue deutsche härte \m/
        Nothing left but smoke and cellar, and a woman with a black umbrella...

        #834561

        Thanks for hosting a very interesting challenge, Sarah! Looking forward to seeing the art work.

        Christel

        #834551
        Rich A
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            Can’t wait to see what you all come up with. Thanks for hosting Sarah!

            #834599
            terriks
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                Wow!! This is a unique and very interesting set of ideas.

                I’m intrigued. I’ll have to break out the sketchbook and start playing with some ideas.

                Thanks so much for hosting, Sarah!

                Terri

                Film photographer with special love for alternative photographic processes - especially ones that get my hands dirty!

                #834553
                laika
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                    “…the days lengthen and summer sprawls across the countryside, sprawls in all the swathes of its green, with its gold and sticky head, with its slumber and the drone of doves and with its butterflies and its lizards and its sunflowers, over and over again, its doves, its butterflies, its lizards, its sunflowers, each one an echo-child while the fruit ripens and the grotesque boles of the ancient apple trees are dappled in the low rays of the sun and the air smells of such rotten sweetness as brings a hunger to the breast, and makes of the heart a sea-bed, and a tear, the fruit of salt and water, ripens, fed by a summer sorrow, ripens and falls … falls gradually along the cheekbones, wanders over the wastelands listlessly, the loveliest emblem of the heart’s condition.”
                    – Mervyn Peake, “Gormenghast Trilogy”

                    Cool concepts, Sarah! And sorry, but I couldn’t resist the mention of Meryn Peake :)

                    Lamar

                    Art is life's dream interpretation.
                    - Otto Rank

                    #834580
                    SarahY
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                        Mervyn Peake rocked :clap: The Gormenghast Trilogy has such haunting beauty. I’ve read most of his books, the one that stands out the most is Mr. Pye.

                        I’ve begun my first non-rep abstract :thumbsup:

                        http://www.shyeomans.co.uk
                        \m/ neue deutsche härte \m/
                        Nothing left but smoke and cellar, and a woman with a black umbrella...

                        #834562

                        Great going, Sarah! are you going to show us your wip?

                        Christel

                        #834631
                        Mira
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                            Wow, what a complex and fascinating suggestion for the month’s theme! I want to paint my first abstract :lol: and get back to some experimenting with limited palette, I think I haven’t tried just 4 colors, let alone only three… Ideas, ideas! ;)

                            Thanks for hosting this month, Sarah! :) I hope I’ll be able to do a couple of paintings :)

                            I love oil pastels and have created a blog about this medium. While the blog posts are in Russian, still I invite you to get inspired with various artists' beautiful OP paintings in my blog's gallery: https://oilpastelist.wordpress.com/gallery

                            #834581
                            SarahY
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                                are you going to show us your wip?

                                Will do!

                                I hope I’ll be able to do a couple of paintings :)

                                I hope so too, I was afraid I might be the only one! :lol:

                                http://www.shyeomans.co.uk
                                \m/ neue deutsche härte \m/
                                Nothing left but smoke and cellar, and a woman with a black umbrella...

                                #834554
                                talinka
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                                    Cool challenge!
                                    I’m not much of a minimalsit. More like a maximalist, actually.
                                    So it’s the limited palette challenge for my, please.

                                    Tali

                                    #834582
                                    SarahY
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                                        This is the beginning, done on Monday. I’m re-using an offcut of dark green Pastelmat that measure 12″x9″. I chose my favourite Neocolour II’s and made loopy squiggles, then I brushed them with water and watched the pigment ooze. I had to press really hard, otherwise not enough pigment is left behind:

                                        Didn’t manage to work on it again until today, but this is how it looks now:

                                        One thing I really like about the Neocolour II’s is that the colour range matches the Neopastels. So today I worked on it with all of my favourite oil pastels; mostly Neopastels, but also the scrumptious warm grey Van Gogh, black Van Gogh, and silver grey Mungyo that Mira sent me from Russia. Thanks so much, Mira :heart:

                                        http://www.shyeomans.co.uk
                                        \m/ neue deutsche härte \m/
                                        Nothing left but smoke and cellar, and a woman with a black umbrella...

                                        #834600
                                        terriks
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                                            What a lovely palette! I like this very much, Sarah.

                                            The silver gray from Mungyo is a wonderful OP. Neopastel also has a silver gray, but it has a lot of blue in it. The Mungyo is much more true to being a gray, IMO. Looks lovely here!

                                            Terri

                                            Film photographer with special love for alternative photographic processes - especially ones that get my hands dirty!

                                            #834555
                                            talinka
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                                                Cool painting. Very Kandinsky-ish. I love your palette.

                                                Tali

                                                #834563

                                                It looks great already, Sarah! Love your palette.

                                                Christel

                                                #834564

                                                “…moonlight…transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse’s mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows.”
                                                – Richard Adams, “Watership Down”
                                                Painting in monocolor is not as easy as I initially thought:lol: . Actually I think graphite drawing would be easier:angel:
                                                I took a scene with trees, added grass and adjusted colors and values digitally before attempting it in op’s.I did do a rough background layer with blue, brown and white acrylic. The op’s aren’t blended all the way as I was aiming to use the texture of the paper to help with the foliage. I wasn’t quite satisfied with the result and resorted to using my graphite pencil
                                                A4

                                                Christel

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