More from the Friends Room at the RA

RA Friends Room 13th September 2011
pen and ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine Sketchbook, 8" x 11"
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I have a very long series of sketches of people (Friends of the RA and their guests to be specific) in the Friends Room at the Royal Academy of Arts.  You can see them in my Interior Landscapes Gallery on Pastels and Pencils my portfolio website

This is the latest and was sketched after I'd finished making my notes about the Degas exhibition which I saw last week. (see MAKING A MARK: REVIEW: Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement and MAKING A MARK: The Degas Exhibition - notes for pastellists)

A sketching tool kit......for travels with a sketchbook

This post is going to link to all the posts I've previously written about assembling a tool kit for sketching plein air.

Pencil cases (for coloured pencils) and Sketchbooks (Daler Rowney and Moleskine)
My sketching toolkit for day trips
Photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

First off, everybody's idea of what they need is different - there is no one right answer. You need to experiment to find out what works for you. Different circumstances also require different kits - you need to think about where and how long you will have to carry your kit.

These are just my ideas of the different ways I assemble a tool kit of materials when travelling with my sketchbook.

Sketching toolkits

• A portable sketching kit - designed for those who like to use watercolour pencils 
• Plein Air Sketching at Kew 04.05.06 - includes a photo and list of the kit I typically take out with me when I travel around the UK with the intention of doing some serious sketching 
• Sketch toolkit - what I take overseas - when going on a serious art holiday the kit comes first and the clothes come second!

The following posts include photos of my set-ups at different places in the USA during the summer of 2006.

• 250 miles riding 'bitch' in the desert - a minimalist kit for when space is at a premium
• Plein air sketching in Albuquerque - kit for a morning's sketching of the hills above Albuquerque
• A visit to an art store and Walden Pond - includes photo of my plein air pastel set-up and comments on using a StudioPak from ArtBin for the first time
• Rocky Neck and Rockport Massachusetts - includes a photo of my set-up and a description of the sketching kit for a day's sketching

Art Materials and Advice on Sketching

In addition, on my website I have:

• a page dedicated to describing the art materials I use. Any materials I mention in the above blog posts can be found on this page - usually with a photograph
• advice on sketching - which includes reference to the sketching toolkits mentioned above

I'll update this summary as and when I write about items in sketching toolkits.

Next I'll provide links to posts about individual items which are recommended for sketching plein air.

Links: [these have been updated as sites have changed]

• Advice on Sketching Toolkits and Materials
• Sketching for Real - a class with assignments
• Travels with a Sketchbook - tips and techniques PLUS Making A Mark FREE Guides:
• Starting to sketch with coloured pencils
• 10 Reasons to Sketch with Coloured Pencils
• Sketching plein air with coloured pencils

Dianna Ponting Pastel Workshop weekend - 15th-16th July

On my first weekend in California I took a pastel workshop up the coast in San Clemente with Dianna Ponting SFCA, PPC, MPAC, PSA. Dianna is the current President of the Federation of Canadian Artists. She has also been awarded the status of Master Pastellist by Pastel Artists Canada and Premiere Pastellist by the Pastel Society of Canada.

Pomegranates in Pastels
produced using Dianna's techniques
from my own reference photo

The class had been booked out for some time with a number of pastellists in the southwest USA anxiously trawling for a cancellation. Everybody was quite taken with the fact that I had come all the way from England for the workshop - although I did say that I had a few other plans for my visit as well! It was great to meet all the people from Wet Canvas behind all the online names - not least my very dear friend Rosa Weitsel, who has now been officially designated by Louise and me as a 'hoot and a half'.

I've never sought to emulate the pastel style of Dianna (mainly because I never thought I'd have the patience!) but am always interested to learn new things and wanted to know how she produces the pin point realism of her pastels.

Being largely a self-taught pastellist, I learned a huge amount of practical information about Dianna's approach to pastels in terms of:

• working with La Carte pastel board (what you can and can't do with it) - an abrasive surface which I'd only used once or twice before
• transfer and registration of an image on the support
• particular tools used to help achieve her 'look'

Key learning points for most people - and me - included:

• how to transfer a planned image on to an abrasive and coloured support media
• how to keep a pastel work in good condition while working on it
• how to get saturated colours and good contrast
• the benefits of using General Pencil's white charcoal pencil
• how to get really ace DARK darks - and which pastels work best for this
• how much pastel is needed before blending can be truly effective
• how to use blending and erasing tools (you'd be amazed!)
• the best sharpener for pastel pencils (I subsequently bought one!)
• how to simplify and exaggerate the reference image while retaining a sense of detailed realism.

One of the things I learned was how fast Dianna works! Truly impressive - and a great lesson for anybody who thinks detailed works must necessarily take hours and hours and hours - although they might take a bit longer until you've built up the expertise in working as Dianna does! ;)

All the workshop students were able to produce really good work from the reference image during the weekend using very different pastel sets plus a selection of the dark pastels used by Dianna and the tools on her supplies list. All were slightly different - but all demonstrated how they'd built on the lessons learned in the class.
Style wise, I'm still not going to try and emulate Dianna - not least because our colour signatures are completely different. However, I'm sure I'm going to be able to use the lessons learned within my particular approach to pastel. I tried to do this on the second day with the pomegranate work at the top of this post - it's a combination of the way I normally work and some of the things I learned during Dianna's workshop.

I'd highly recommend a pastel workshop of the sort I attended for those who have found their feet with pastels and want to progress to producing highly finished work of a realist nature. However, I'm sure any artist interested in pastels pastellist will learn something new and of value at one of Dianna's workshops. She is also a well organised and enormously patient and helpful teacher - even with a workshop which has sold out!

Participants in Dianna Ponting's workshop at
the San Clemente Art Supply Store (July 2006)

For those who'd like to register for a workshop with Dianna Ponting, check out her website for details of future workshops (or see the links below) - but do note that most seem to get booked out pretty quickly! The next one seems to be in Arizona in September and there will be another workshop in San Clemente in July next year.

For an alternative perspective, see Louise's take on the workshop in "A Ponting Class". I'm also going to finish with an image of the work she did from Dianna's reference image during the workshop. Bear in mind that Louise doesn't normally work in pastels, learned lots of new ways to work and that I photographed this the next day straight from the workshop - with no final tidying up done as yet!


Links:

• Dianna Ponting website
• Dianna Ponting workshops - North America (note they get full fast!)
• Dianna Ponting workshops - UK (details of completed workshops for 2006 only)
• Federation of Canadian Artists
• Pastel Society of Canada
• Pastel Artists Canada
• Wet Canvas - Soft Pastels Studio
• Wet Canvas - Pastel Talk

Technorati tags: art , painting , pastel , pastels