Today, I dwelved into the wonderful world of pastels. :)
I just love the way pastels let you 'interact' with your picture. It feels almost as if you're sculpting something, when you blend them beneath your fingers, pulling colours across the paper with your bare hands. Pastels have this very unrefined, 'raw' feel to them. Instead of drawing perfect, smooth, artificial lines, they crumble and smudge and fill the air with colourful, floury dust. It's so therapeutic to create art with this feeling of freedom -- this reckless abandon -- where you don't have to calculate your every move. I worked on two pieces today. The first one is complete... I made it for my mommy:
The second piece is still in progress. It's going to be a portrait of a girl who's leaning against a book with one hand, leaning her head on her other hand, daydreaming. I put a smiley face on the photo at the left to show you where the head's going to go (the sketching is kind of hard to see).
The spine on the green book is done all wrong, but I'm going to fix that when I do the background -- probably all-black. I'm also really bothered by the fact that I didn't give the poor girl an elbow... I'll see if I can add that without messing up too much of what I've done. But first, I'll finish her head, arm, and hand... it's going to be kind of hard to reach into those spots without smudging everything I've already done... Normally, I'd probably give up on this piece -- I don't usually work on art for more than one sitting; but, now that it's up here for the whole world to see, I feel like I have to finish it. I work well under pressure. :) I'm pretty pleased with it overall, despite some of the flaws... it'll keep me busy over the next few days, at any rate!
In other news, God has answered a prayer (thank you, Lord!) of mine that I've been praying for over 3 years. It means some huge changes in my life, so I'll be off the Web for a while... will probably return to regular posts in mid-September. I'll try to fill you in as much as I can in-between then!
Love, Oksana
3 comments:
i lovvvee pastels too! but unfortunately i'm not good at drawing.
WOW! oksy those are amazing! i can't wait to see the second one finished :)
i know what you mean about God making changes... these next few months i have no idea what He is going to do with the life He gave me. i'm a little scared because i've never totally trusted Him with every single area of my life before now. i know that i will have to do plenty of hard things, and that i'll fail, but He will just pick me up and put me right back where He wants me.
i'll be praying for you girl... that you will trust God with these changes to the fullest and htat he will bless you for being bold enough to take the first step in making those changes, whatever they may be :)
i know that you'll be off the web, but email me and keep me updated, i would love to hear what God is doing in your life!
Those are very cool! I've always found pastels to be quite difficult because they often smudge, but they are lots of fun-especially to blend and mix colors!
Laura: Thank you for the encouragement! :) You have the right attitude: just trust him wherever he leads, and remember that your life belongs to him. I'll try to email you, though I can't quite guarantee it at this point -- too much going on!
Carmen: They smudge even more when you do the right side of the face first, like I just did. :P Now I have to cover up half of the drawing with paper to do the other half, since I'm right-handed... sigh.
They're still fun, though! :) Thanks for your comment.
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