New Tool and Experiment

Painter Marc Hanson recently talked on his page, about some new gloves he used for painting. I generally hate to wear gloves - even in the winter, but I have been wearing the blue nitrile gloves when I paint with oils to hold the wiping rag in my right hand (I'm left handed). The problem is my hand gets pretty sweaty and if you take them off, it's next to impossible to put them back on, so you have to put on a new one. Marc suggested that these gloves worked well for him:

I found them at my local Do It Best retail hardware store, Roush Hardware. They come in several sizes. I picked the medium (assuming they were men's sizes), as I have long fingers. They fit really well. I thought I would give them a try today even though I planned on working with pastels. Although I generally use "Gloves in a Bottle" barrier lotion when I work in pastels.

These gloves worked GREAT! My hands were very comfortable, the back stretches and breathes and once I got working, I kinda forgot I had them on. Any pastel dust barely stuck to the fingers, or was easy to brush off with a paper towel.

Now on to my painting. Last night was a rainy evening, so I just stayed in and watched a DVD of Ann Templeton, "Abstracting the Landscape in Pastel". I've seen photos of her work before, but it was really nice to see how she worked. I learned much from this video. I loved seeing the broken color that showed through as she worked her way to finish.

I am waiting for two orders of sanded pastel paper to finally come available. There is a big shortage in this paper in the pastel industry. I wanted to work larger, but I only had a few smaller pieces left in my stash. I mounted a piece on foamcore board and let it dry overnight. I was using one of my photos, in black and white, for reference. I wanted to try Ann's technique which I'd hope would loosen up my painting.

 B&W photo shown above and my basic design sketched with a grey NuPastel.

I used hard NuPastels to place big shapes. I have a limited amount of NuPastels so my color choices were probably not the best. I should have searched for some regular hard pastels in better colors/values.

I wet the NuPastel with odorless mineral spirits scrubbed in with a bristle brush and let it dry.

The final painting. There are several areas I really like, but the composition could be stronger. It was a good experiment.