Pastel picture

I've always liked drawing, but rarely indulge myself. Recently joined a local art group, and the demo/workshop last week was using pastels. I have used them a little in the past, but have realised that that may suit my way of working better than other media.

I'm quite pleased with this, being only a second attempt at something finished. I made it for a purpose though.

Our newly decorated living room in our 1935 house has a new (to us) mantelpiece, that I bought in a charity shop. It had been stripped but was quite dirty and unkempt. We sanded it down and lime waxed it, but I wanted something to fill the space in the middle. Eventually it will probably be a cross stitch or tapestry, but in the meantime, I thought this drawing would fit the bill. Being homemade meant I could match the colours to both the mantelpiece and the living room.

Aha. This must be the end of the story that began in this thread, about staining wood. Glad you've found a solution.

I like your picture. I think you've succeeded very well at matching the materials around it, it looks very fitting in that space. Do you know what would have originally been there ?

The fire surround is an interesting design. It is a brave person who uses long mitred corners directly over a fireplace - still, I guess it has had plenty of time to stabilise by now. Another advantage of using recycled / re-claimed materials !

That is lovely Freebird, I like the soft colours that you get with pastels. That will do nicely for my bedroom when you've had enough of it. It is an unusual fire surround and your hellebore fit the space perfectly.

It looks beautiful.

That's lovely, Freebird. In fact the whole fire surround is a super piece of work.

This is my most recent 'make'. I received a new, large box of pastels for Christmas. Some of the colours are duplicated in other sets that I have, and I thought it would be useful to have a chart of all the colours I own, along with info about which set they belong to. I find it easier to choose a colour I want from a sample than by looking at the pastel.

As I have about 180 pastels now, I thought a book would be the most compact, and portable way of keeping the colour samples.

When it came to covering the book, I was looking for something suitable and came across the drawing I did at the demo evening a couple of months ago. Wasn't specially pleased with it, so thought it worth experimenting with. Pastel is very smudgey, so used fixative first, and then coated the paper with a wax varnish. Thought it might take the pastel off with it, but no, it worked, making a moderately robust surface.

So here it is finished - I'm stupidly pleased with it. It's not often you can take something you don't much like, and turn it into something that you do.

Hmm, pics not appearing. Cooking dinner at the mo. Will look again later.

Going to try posting pics again, each on a separate post.

The photos look fine from here FB. Not only a good way of using the picture, but a useful method of making your pictures more durable. It sounds like something that will be a useful technique to expand the range of things you can make using them.

I do envy people who have artistic ability. When I try to be arty it usually comes out looking like a 5 year old did it