These boots are in my garden....my hiking boots from the 70's. Over the years the leather has hardened and cracked so I decided it was time for them to have a new purpose. They traveled through many a mile in the Sequoias, the High Sierras on backpacking trips. They kicked a few stones, held up on many miles of girl scout camps and keep me from tripping up on the trails. Here's to the new life old shoes with many stories.....
here's a mini Pastel tutorial...my new Pastel class starts this friday at
Escondido Adult School. 8 weeks on friday afternoons....
I started out with charcoal on tinted sanded pastel paper. The charcoal lines were softened with a paper towel, my fingers, and set with denatured alcohol using a big acrylic brush. This keeps the dust down and solidifies the dark values onto the paper.
Started to bring in background color with nupastels..these pastels are hard and provides a good way to start up color on the surface.
this image paper background was altered...it's not this yellow! What I wanted to show you was the foreground surface. I used a variety of soft and hard sticks and "scumbled" the colors...I love this word...it means to take a color stick, hold it on its side for a broad mark and gently layer colors. This allows translucency of color layers to slighty blend.
See the sticks at the top of the page? I brought out warm and cool colors with tints and shades to start layering "broken color" on the shapes. I started at the toe area of the boot. Broken color refers to the technique where you draw color lines...drawing lines side by side for visual blending rather than blending.
More warms and cools on the boot.....and the shoe strings
now I'm starting to bring in some bright colors on the succulents ....working dark to light.
more steps on part II ....in a few weeks!
