Art In Education

September 10th through the 16th is National Art in Education week. Since I have been doing a lot of step by step art demonstration type post. I thought I would stay with the trend. For the 30-30 challenge, I posted the beginning of my red tailed hawk that I used in my class on Birds in Art.

I work in a old world style, using cotton rag paper (Rives BFK) is one of my favorites, and toning the paper with medium soft pastels. The "medium" word just describes the hardness the soft pastel. Different brands of pastels, range from handmade, very soft (buttery) to very hard. To tone the paper, I like a medium that does not flake as much. After the paper is toned evenly, I do a charcoal sketch, very lightly, with little detail. I move to a kneaded eraser to remove the lighter parts of the image. Kneaded erasers can be found in most arts & crafts stores.

Once the under drawing is established, I continue using an additive progress. Using stick pastels to block in under-color, also known as under-painting. These colors act as compliments to the layer that will be on top of the finished work.

The final steps are using pastel pencils and charcoal pencils. I use a white charcoal towards the end to bring up the highlights. For the spots that have the brightest whites, softer pastel sticks work beautifully.

This is a general overall of the technique I prefer. If you would like to learn more you can sign up for one of my workshops or private lessons. I believe in sharing information and this week, I will continue to post step by step images on this technique. Here are a few of the hawk in progress.