Where have I been?
I haven’t blogged in a while here because I have been focusing on our Farm business. It started with a garden and a few chickens, then turned into an apiary of two hives and two ducks. Now we have a small Market Garden, a few more chickens, the same two ducks, and those two hives have morphed into seven honeybee hives. The farm used to be called The Baker Farm, but we had to rename it to something unused in our area to officially make it an LLC.
My husband and I have been casually selling honey and vegetables at our local farmer’s market, and I have sold some of my art, too. I then added a link to this site from the ThreeRiverOaksFarm website and vice versa. Please check it out.
Clairfontaine Pastelmat
With it being summer and my focus on the farm, I haven’t been making art as much as I’d like, but I did just finish this cat in Polychromos colored pencil. This is the first time I have ever used the expensive Clairfontaine Pastelmat. It was rougher than I’d imagined, but it layers lots of colored pencil beautifully. I used a 9×12 white sheet and found it tough at first to make fine details. I am used to using Bristol Board, which is a lot smoother. But this was my first try, and it turned out nicely, I think. I purchased this from the link above through Amazon and was rather disappointed in the packaging. When I purchase items from online art stores (local stores just don’t carry what I’m looking for), they seem to package things more carefully.
I used PanPastel for the background, and I loved how that turned out. You need to use the colorless blender on the rough paper, as it grabs hold of it so well. The paper sort of feels like a smooth sandpaper. As I look at the piece, I see where I could probably spend hours more on it, and maybe I should? I’d love some feedback on this. Sometimes I can overwork a piece and use all the tooth of the paper, trying too hard for realism, but with Pastelmat, the tooth seems unending, making it difficult to know when to stop.
This may be a case of using the Pastelmat for a while and then going back and redoing the cat to see if I have improved. But the paper is rather pricey for me. I will close for now and try to make time to blog more here and to make more art. I hope to hear from you. Please comment, and thanks for being here.
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