LESSON PLANS 2022 (2nd half) Lesson 4. Fruity still-life with soft pastels.

In this lesson I'm asking my student to use soft pastels but in a very different way from the pointillism we were using last week. I Want them to think about hard edges and soft transitions as they study the fruit (or subject) in front of them. Above are some lovely examples of what I'm talking about. Once again we'll talk about the various colour collections they use to create the different tones.

Winter term, 2nd half 2022. Lesson 4. Soft pastels, softer edges! Once again fruit will be your main subject, either from a still-life in front of you or from a good picture of a fruity still-life. You can add cloth, bowl etc., your choice.

· Ideally you’ll work on coloured paper – this gives you access to both light and dark marks right at the start. White paper is fine if you prefer.

· Set up your still life in front of you (or have the image you are working from easily visible).

· Using your pastels on their sides (having chosen appropriate colours) block the main shapes of your still-life in place. Notice that with the right pressure and the pastel on its side you can create really crisp edges.

· Look at some of the examples on my laptop – the one of apples for instance. Note the variety of colours in one apple, many colours in the shadows of the white cloth, across the main apple pinks, reds, blues, yellows, white etc.

· Once you know where your fruits are you can build up colours across them to find the various colours and tones across your fruits.

· Look carefully at the edges of your fruits to see how they relate to their backgrounds. Light against dark or dark against light? Smudge your edges to re-negotiate them. Retain some of the smudged edges.

· As your fruits come into focus, use strokes of hatched colours, blocks of colour, and even perhaps a few dots and dashes of colour (as we did in the last lesson) on the final surface.

Next lesson: You are going to have one more lesson of fruity still-life but you are going to choose the medium. Think about the medium you’d like to use – something you haven’t tried before or a medium you want to try again. Bring fruit and the medium of your choice – it could be mixed media with collage, it might be pencil or charcoal. You might bring oils or acrylics. Feel free to discuss with me.