September Update

There isn't a lot to report this month: no new pens, no new inks. I have managed to spend a few hundred dollars on art supplies, though. (I know, I know...where have my priorities gone?)

Anyway, so I have been keeping myself busy with some arty stuff - like small works with soft pastels. Now, I always considered myself an aspiring painter, specifically a watercolorist, yet it seems as though at the moment I have a natural affinity to soft pastel. It all came about one evening when I found the incredibly inspiring blog of oil painter, Qiang-Huang. Strong light and dark contrasts, clean color and expressive-yet-precise brush strokes where nothing is overstated. To me, Huang's style is perfection.

So it was 9PM and I was looking at Huang's wonderful images with fingers that were itching to break out my pochade box, but it was 9PM and I had work the next day and it would take me some time to set it all up. Instead, I got out my pastel box and a pad of Canson Mi-Teintes and just began laying color down. It was surprisingly enjoyable. The next night I started and finished another pastel rendition of a Huang oil painting. I have completed half a dozen or so small pastel paintings now, and have found I am understanding quite a bit more about color and value.

You can see some of my efforts in my Flickr Gallery: