April Challenges
In April the art group challenges were to do a spring flower in less than an hour and paint a picture with my non dominant hand.
Spring flowers – had to be daffs. One of my favourite flowers. I went for the Bravoure variety. Pale petals and a dark trumpet. I’m not exactly renowned for speed when it comes to painting. Rising to the challenge, I decided to go for it and did this in 55 minutes. Outline drawn with pastel pencil on black pastel paper and filled in with pastels.
After the submission I did a little refining on the picture. Mainly adding more pastel to the flower to make it less transparent. You can see the finished artwork in my flora gallery.
Non Dominant hand. I am quite surprised at how this has turned out. Pastels and pastel pencils on A4 paper. The sky and the hills which are pastel laid down and blended with fingers weren’t too difficult. In fact when working normally with pastels I do use my left hand for blending. I found the detailed stuff in the foreground difficult left-handed. Laying down small pastel marks and using blenders my hand started to ache. Then doing straight outlines with dark pencils took lots of concentration. The gate’s a bit wonky but hey ho – it was done with my left hand. I think I may have another go at this – larger and I’m currently debating pastel or acrylic.