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Dee Cowell, Pastels Still Life demo, 18 Aug 2009 Visit her gallery, www.3dddart.co.uk and her new "learning-art-on-line" website, vir2l-artstudent.com. Visit her on Facebook and Youtube Try one of her holidays or workshops - (download 2010 flier) Contact her by email: info@vir2l-artstudent.com
Dee was "volunteered" at the last minute - despite phone calls and emails we couldn't contact our booked demonstrator, who didn't show up. The demo was a lovely "stream-of-consciousness", slipping between the painting process and reminisciences of her life in Zimbabwe as a youngster (a dozen big dogs to protect children too small to see predators over the long grass, a domesticated baboon grooming a terrified chicken because people didn't like to be groomed, and so on). Dee was using a black Daler Rowney Murano paper - "Dark paper is particularly good if you're lazy". Other papers are available if you want more tooth (Fischer 400lb) or less (Sennelier pastel card). Tooth becomes increasingly important the more layers of pastel you want to apply. She's collected an enormous range of pastels (hard, soft, even pastel pencils - Faber-Castel's are good).	Each time she has used a new colour in a painting she puts it on a plate, not back in the general collection. That way the plate will always contain the exact colour she needs to correct something. She always buys three tones (light, mid and dark) of each new colour.
This photo of the arrangement was taken half way through, after Dee had been pulling flowers out to look at them closer to - as in the picture below. She decided to make no attempt this time to reproduce the pattern on the vase.	First some general hints on vases and flowers. Don't measure with a ruler. It's much easier to copy lengths marked on a spare bit of paper. Two or three tiny charcoal marks measured from the edge make sure that the centre-line of the vase is vertical. Then draw one side by eye and adjust it until you are pleased. Next, for each point where the curvature changes, mark the distance from the centre-line on your spare bit of paper and carry this across. Incidentally, like many others Dee recommends drawing with short straight carefully aligned marks and then smoothing into the shape you want. For flowers it's often best to start where the flower joins the stem. Remember perspective if the top of the flower is round. Shading will depend on where the light is coming from (she always marks this). This frequently makes it best to start painting a darker or less detailed inside before the outside - "Dark to light, like oils"
Then she started on the demo proper. The paper was backed by a bit of newspaper to soften the surface and the bottom couple of inches were folded up to catch falling pastel (grinding it into the carpet goes down badly). Hints started pouring out: lightly mark the focal point and other interesting features (don't be a slave to the original) arrangements look good if the flowers reach about one and a bit vase-heights above the vase itself to see tonal differences take a B&W photo (or look through a bit of red craft-shop film) start a bit dull and add colour and lights at the end - "Don't do it too soon"
	. . . and still the hints kept coming as work proceeded: look how leaves are attached to the stem (staggered? in pairs?) - often more important than the flowers themselves. charcoal is great for darkening if you don't have a dark enough tone everything looks much fresher if you make graduations of colour gently with the original colours, not by smudging a stiff brush will remove pastel and a wet one will soften edges (putty rubbers leave marks) petals are single stroke spikes, not loops test colours on the edge of the paper . . . until it was coffee time.
After coffee Dee started putting more detail in, but often knocked it back again (dry brush) until she was happy with it. The top left white flower was done with single stokes of the edge of a short pastel stick. She sharpened edges, defining petals, by adding very dark negative spaces. A slash of green stalk and some blue flowers pushed the left-hand rose back. By the way, these blue flowers, done by stabbing with the end of a pastel stick, were originally lime-yellow but that didn't suit the colour composition (artist's license). She then left the picture ("finished" and photographed after the main demo - see below) to show us quickly how a wet brush can lift colour off a soft pastel stick and apply it to a wishy-washy watercolour to bring it to life. Most of the darker pink here was applied that way.	A final surprise was to be told that Schminke sell a varnish to make watercolours wipeable. Golden Acrylics Topcoat (gloss or semi gloss) high UVLS filters prevent fading
Dee's photo of the result of a fascinating evening

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