Persimmon Study

With my birthday money, I bought three books on fiber art works.  One was a book of stitchery and the other two are by a fabulous felt painting artist.  I have admired her work for some time so I decided to splurge and buy her two books - one with felted landscape and one with felted flowers/still life.  These two books were beyond my expectations in useful tips as well as inspiration.  

One of the things that I took away from reading the felting books (And I was so good about reading her books.  I didn't skip ahead!  I didn't thumb through them.  I read, at every opportunity each and every page and I rarely do this when it comes to books full of visual representations.)  Anyhow, she talked about really studying your subject matter and making a mood board with your "study" material.  Sketch, paint, torn paper collages, photographs, and pieces of wool for color.  She highly recommended oil pastels as her favorite medium for making study pictures because of the richness of color and that they are similar to felting in terms of not being overly precise about the details.  So...Phil ordered me an oil pastel set and a pad of oil pastel paper!  

I took these persimmon pictures on thanksgiving in the evening lighting. 





I did this sketch with a set of old oil pastels while I was waiting for my set to come in the mail.



I made this out of fabric with some wool overlap.  I almost gave up on it.  I couldn't get the vase to look right and I didn't have the right colors to make the persimmons (the wool helped).  I couldn't seem to find the right background color.  But eventually, it did pull together.



This was the first piece I did with my new oil pastel set.  I had intended to completely cover the background but I was afraid I would ruin it by not being able to cut in around the still life.  The pastels are very similar to crayons (though oily not waxy and they blend better) in that they are thick (crayon sized) and it is hard to create fine lines and work in detail (which is good for me as detail work and accuracy are not strong skills of mine).  I was intimidated by the big chrysanthemum not knowing how to make all those curling petals but pleased overall in this first attempt at a still life with flowers.  I am so looking forward to practicing more! 







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