I love to work with more than one medium in my art. This week I mix acrylics with soft pastels for a unique landscape.
First published December 16, 2023: After last week’s YouTube lesson, I looked for more interesting stuff on YouTube for this week. I am sure I could have kept on scrolling for hours and still would not have seen even one one-thousandth of what is available for free there. But I was captured by the tutorial by Susan Jenkins which is called “Fun New Technique with Pastels and Acrylics”. (She had me at “fun new”.)
I bought my first set of soft pastels last summer and have taken a couple of classes where I used them. So I was happy to get them out and learn more about their imagery powers. I used my own reference photo, which I took in Utah a few years ago. The rock formations there are so dramatic and the colors are drastically different than I usually use, which I guess is what makes me a Michigander (Go Green, Go Blue!).
Susan recommended using an acrylic paper for the substrate, which I do not have. I ordered some, but it won’t be in for a couple of weeks, so I used a heavy watercolor paper. I am dying to see what this acrylic paper looks like, since I think the watercolor paper impacted my ability to blend the pastels completely. I did a very simple acrylic backdrop, knowing that the real details would come from the pastels. I am not going to give away Susan’s secrets on the process used, and recommend you watch her video. It is very well done and she does a good job of explaining her process. Here is how mine turned out. As you can see, I am not completely comfortable with pastels yet, but I sure had fun watching her tutorial and making this piece.
As you can see, I even had trouble signing on top of the pastels. Live and learn. I enjoyed working on this piece. There was much more sky in the picture, but I didn’t think it was really adding to the value of the composition, so I have cropped it here.
Thank you, Susan, for a very well done presentation on acrylics and pastels! I will try this again when the acrylic paper gets here!
Happy painting…