Hand made pastels

It's like being invited in to a delivery room to watch a live birth. Participating in a workshop where Kitty Wallis teaches the class how to make pastels, well, it's like watching each person awaken to their playful, technicolor selves.

It's labor intensive, and kind of messy, but look at all of the sticks of pure color we made! I got to take home some of them, too. Now, wait about a week and then I can start to use them! Woo hoo!

Carried away by color!

I had to turn on the heater in the studio to get things warmed up after a few days away for Thanksgiving. But, nothing was going to stop me from using my new pastels. Here you see my efforts.

Both of these were done from photos I took in Santa Cruz, where I went with three art friends for a week of painting and art adventure last year.

Neither painting is finished, but look at that color! Wow. In the top painting you can see how I got ahold of an orchid colored pastel and sort of let it take over the painting. If a little is good, a lot is better, right?

In the bottom painting, I put down some of those gorgeous nearly neon yellow greens. Felt like sunshine was pouring out of the paper!

More tomorrow.

New pastels ready to use!

ready to use!

me making one of many purple pastels
Kitty Wallis' portrait of Jack
looks like he's peeking over my shoulder
(posted with permission)

You may be wondering why I have made such a fuss over the pastels made at Kitty Wallis' studio with her Moist Pastels.

Simply put, they are PURE COLOR. Kitty has spent years creating formulae for mixing pure color from pure pigments and finding just the right white chalk so that there is no hint of gray in even the lightest mixtures.

Painting with Kitty's pastels is like painting with light.

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color. (Paul Cezanne)

Tomorrow, I will use them! I can hardly wait!