Time to brighten things up. Experimenting with Oil pastels and Ink for Karenb54
As I picked up my dip pen to work on my steemit mandala this morning my friend Karenb54 was playing on my mind.
I've been wanting to do a #yournameinlights post about her since @williambanks first created the tag, but haven't liked any of the doodles or mandalas's I have started for her.
I wanted to do something special for her, you see I feel quite lucky to be able to call Karen a friend. I first met her through several groups on facebook and have always admired how she tenacious she is. Life has thrown a lot her way and while she has her wobbles she keeps on going. But since she started posting openly about her disability and the abuse she suffered in her youth I have realised that she is much stronger than I originally thought. (even if she doesn't feel strong at times).
So for Karen's picture, I decided to be brave like her by using a medium I've never worked with before so I broke out the oil pastels that have sat unopened since I bought them sometime in the noughties.
Blend blend blend
After a fair bit of research on techniques I got stuck in deciding to use the simple flower shape I use a lot in my doodles, I scrambled the colours together as seen in the videos and started to blend.
Quickly discovering that using my fingers to blend made my teeth twitch so I switched to cotton wool buds and kept going until I had this.
I Hated it!
I was about ready to rage quit and throw the piece and the pastels in the bin, but my thoughts wandered back to Karen and I had to find a way to make it work. I sprayed a layer of polyurethane over the oils waited for it to dry then got to work with my ink and dip pen.
It was more difficult than usual as the ink wants to resist the polyurethane so kept pooling but with a little gentle teasing it would eventually stay where I wanted it. Once the ink had dried I gave it an another protective coat of spray and left it to dry.
Thank you for inspiring me to stick with it karen, I won't give up on the oil pastels anytime soon. Fingers crossed the next picture i send you will be a lot better than this one.
I am honoured to call such a beautiful person in and out my friend. Your always there when I need help, your very patient and are fantastic at what you do, everything you put your mind to works and you have a way about you that shines out. Thank you for this lovely artwork I am grateful you thought about me. Thank you
hehe you haven't seen the mess in my sketchbook there is a lot that doesn't make it here, but those messes help me find my way to the better stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do you keep teasing us with mentions of your doodling :D
There really sad believe me your cat could do a better job. My lot just laugh, says it all
Wow I can't believe this was your first time using oil pastels - it came out beautifully! From the sound of this post, you are definitely your harshest critic ;-)
I'm not sure if you already sell your art work, but you might be interested in selling it on Peerhub.com (I see you already reblogged the latest post). It is a marketplace that is focused around Steem dollars and the Steemit community. We're holding a raffle this week with a pool of 150 SD if you post an item on the site. I will also be making a weekly post highlighting newly listed items in the marketplace that could potentially help your art and maybe also your crochet creations reach a wider audience :-)
I honestly hadn't thought about selling my work, I only recently picked it up again so everything is still quite experimental, but I will give it some serious thought.
I did have a look through the site the last night.I'm very excited about it although I did find it difficult to locate anything outside of the US, the cost of importing even small items to the Uk is very prohibitive for me. Are their plans to be able to shop by country?
I really hope you consider selling some of your work, it's amazing!
I believe there are plans to be able to shop by country. Right now what you can do is post in the description "This item ships to the UK only."
Your Mandelas are amazing. :)
I think Sarah's crochet items and mandalas would do really well!
Some of my favourite media oil pastels and inks. You have some beautiful colours here.
I can see why, I love the texture of the ink sitting on top of the oil pastels when it's all dry. i'm not sure how I feel about the oil pastels themselves yet, i think i need to experiment a lot more with them.
Sarah, this is beautiful! I see what you mean about throwing out the whiteout and persevere. It's such a happy piece! I love it.
it' really does push you and leads to a lot of pleasant surprises. Of course, there are times a piece just can't be saved. Even then it's worth keeping hold of them to look at again with fresh eyes in a few months. just like we do with the odd random paragraphs we have to write down to get out of our heads sometimes.