Advice for New Painters

'Summer Bounty'             10x8          pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $145

I had a very wise student today. She wanted to try pastels and had purchased a few supplies. She quickly discovered that what she was painting was not what she had in her head. Instead of giving up or going out and buying more supplies in hopes of making things better....she decided to seek help. She told me she didn't want to develop bad habits so it was time to take a class.

I was very happy to have her come to my studio and share some of the things I have learned along the way that have helped me become a better painter. We chatted.  We test drove some pastels and paper...Terry Ludwig and Diane Townsend seemed to be favorites! We did thumbnails and talked about easy ways to start a painting. After my demo we painted together following the steps I had shared. It was wonderful to share pastels with an enthusiastic artist!

As I prepared for this class I wanted to give my student some good advice....something that would be helpful and encouraging. I came up with four things that helped me when I was new to painting. I'll share two today and two in tomorrow's blog post.

• Get to know your medium.  Research and purchase the best materials you can afford. Learn all you can about pastels and the available brands. Artist quality materials really do make a difference. So often artists tell me they don't want to spend money on the expensive or 'good' pastels and paper until they know they will like it ...or are good enough. It's a catch-22. It is harder to have good results with cheap materials. It can be downright frustrating to paint with cheap hard mid value pastels on unsanded or regular drawing paper. I've met artists who gave up on pastels because they were not having success ...it wasn't their skills....it was their materials.

          ***Before investing in good supplies try them first! See if you can find another pastelist or

                instructor in your area and ask to try out the 'good' pastels. And if you do choose to invest

                in better materials and change your mind...Ebay is your friend.***

• Get Comfortable with your medium. Once you have good supplies you need to get comfortable with them. Use them! Pastels can make a variety of marks. Learn how to hold them so that you can get wide marks, thin linear marks, light strokes, heavy strokes and so on. The best way to get familiar with them is to use them.... a lot!  Make marks. Experiment and play.

         ***A great way to learn how to make marks is to paint without trying to make a good painting.

               Paint skies or simple objects...something that allows you to just make marks and 

               get comfortable with your pastels.

Not sure which brand of pastels or paper to buy? Take them for a test run with a sampler set from Dakota Pastels. Click here for details.

Painting Notes: Today's painting is on Uart 400 grit sanded paper with Terry Ludwig pastels. This was one of the demos painted in my class.