Reflections on a still life

We were asked to bring favorite items to the pastel workshop today, as subjects for our still-life drawing.  Having not picked up a pastel since childhood, I approached this with a bit of trepidation, but thought why not?  And going with a friend -- well, that was especially nice.

I took the copper pitcher which sits in our windowsill nook, filled with dried pussywillow, wheat, and eucalyptus.  Challenging, I suppose, so I brought a chestnut fence post vase (which I've drawn before) as a backup.

Before lunch was trying.  Yikes.  How do you draw with pastel?  Hard to soft?  What about mistakes? I was feeling rather stressed by the time we broke for lunch.  After a nice conversation with my friend out in the sunshine (our class was meeting in a small room with florescent lights, not my favorite), we returned to our drawings.

Happily, layering softer pastels on the harder ones became downright fun, and our instructor helped by picking out colors and showing techniques that would bring our pieces to life.

By the end of the class, all of us had really nice pieces  (there was one person who left at lunchtime,  apparently thinking it wasn't her medium), so didn't experience the magic of the full process).

I really liked my piece, so I was glad I'd persevered.

This iPhone photo has shifted color a bit, and it's not in quite the focus that I'd like, but that's the nature of posting digital images without a special setup.