Tuesday 10 May 2016

Surreal Landscape

We're still doing landscapes in arts class, and I'm actually kind of enjoying it! What is more, I've now reached a point where I willingly reach for my dry pastels at the beginning of every lesson - I honestly never thought this day would come! We can of course use whichever medium we want, but I find that pastels are just so pleasingly straight forward and simple to use. No beating around the bush, and no need to wait for the paint to dry. 

Last Tuesday our arts teacher handed us these two printouts: 


She told us to use the photo on the left as inspiration, including whichever trees we liked the best from the image on the right. Fun! This where I left off at the end of our two-hour class: 


As you can see, I'd managed to finish the tree on the left, but the other two trees plus the foreground remained unfinished. But, of course, I couldn't just leave it like that! So yesterday I dug out my dry pastels again and got cracking: 


About two seconds in my fingers looked like this: 


And before I knew it I had finished the whole thing!


This has been my favourite pastel project so far. The end result is both simplistic but still strangely surreal, I think. And I love how there's a summer storm brewing in the background. 

  

Creating art is a dirty business for sure! 


Have you ever tried dried pastels?

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