Olivia did a demonstration of oil pastels today. As usual she always entertains and teaches us something new! In typical Olivia fashion she started off with working from behind and above her piece so we could see. Amazing how she is able to know what she’s doing from upside down! Quite a few of the demo pieces she did today were on Yupo Paper (polypropeline) which lends itself quite well to blending oil pastels!

Olivia’s oil pastels are pictured in the Spiderman box, and she also uses a white grease pencil and some sharpies when working with the oil pastels. In the last photo you can see the cart, she basically just laid in three colours and blended until it looked like a loose arrangement of flowers in the cart. Never afraid to try things!

Brenda and Susan were using chalk pastels pictured above. Susan’s favourite is Faber-Castell brand, and we can attest to her skill with them!

Doug brought his oil pastel sets to play with as well, one package he had to open, said he’s had them for years but never used them! We all have some supplies like that lurking in our stashes! He said that oil pastels do not completely dry so you must take care to ensure that you protect them with an overlay when transporting, and frame it with archival glass and ensure it is spaced away from the glass so it doesn’t make contact and potentially smear.

Current project of Susan’s using her Faber-Castell chalk pastels!

We also had some show and share pieces today:

Ben brought the two above pieces in. They are both great! He used frisket / resist on the sail boat scene to “save the whites” and also dabbed many many dots of white to get the texture of the water. Great work Ben!

Brenda is working on a piece of two of her husband’s grand children (long since grown to 30 and 35!), as she wanted some help / critique on her drawing. About the only thing that was suggested was to make the boy’s head a little more oval. Look forward to seeing her progress!

Terri brought in a recently finished piece done on canvas board with acrylic, watercolor and pen. The path of light is great, and the darks counterbalance the light perfectly, great job Terri!

Doug brought two pieces in, the one on the left is an early piece of his and shows his skill for clouds! The on the right is all done with palette knife! Two very distinct and very nice pieces by the same person!

And finally, a selection of some of the work done in the palette knife class last week!

Happy New Year to all and see you on January 6th for the first class of the New Year!