Eilean Donan Castle

[delph_ambi]

Oil pastels on primed card (cereal packet).

[Danté]

Delph_ambi, I like this for its light and sense of distance. The colours are to my eye working well. The areas I think could work better are areas of colour shading in/on the water roughly quarter way up from the bottom of the picture, I think they might appear more convincing if the movement when applying the pastel had kept to a flat horizontal as would all light detailing which comes away from any surface that's not water. The area at the base of the castle as it moves left would have benefited from that liquid level approach to clarify that area of the picture as it is a little too ambiguous in respect of reinforcing the water effect at an area which the eye is naturally drawn to. The sky works tonally and it's plain to see the effort made to coax its form to a center weighted effect to aid with the picture's overall composition. I think the portion on the left side of the sky where it reaches half way down the sky pulls off the angled land mass by way of stroke direction a little too forcefully making the sky appear dropped in as a required element as opposed to being an item which would cover the entire drawing surface if all else were to be removed. Some of these points might not be as apparent on the actual picture as transferring them to a back lit screen is a bugger for highlighting stroke direction as I am finding with my own pictures. The cerulean kind of blue is pretty tough to make co exist with the more violet blues, though I think you just about pull it off without the green leanings of the former getting too excited by the red end of the violet shades. Earth colours in the clouds are an asset and you've contained them well in the context of your blues. The foreground vegetation does its job well although I am pondering if the colour temperature in the LH land mass is a little too close to its intensity when perhaps a little more white light could take the edge off allowing a combination of cooling and lower intensity to take care of the more distant features.

Great use of a cereal packet, an enjoyable piece of landscape to have the eye a wandering through.

all the best

Danté

[JohnLott]

Hi Catherine,
Such a good blending of 'pastel' colours in a believable landscape



J.

[delph_ambi]

Colours, eh? Impossible to reproduce. I've just looked critically at the picture on screen and found myself nodding in agreement with your points, and then looked up at the actual picture, which is propped up a few feet away, and realised that the computer version is horribly crude and garish in comparison and even on my screen, where I tried to get as close as I could to the original, it's still nowhere near. The lack of clarity at the base of the castle is due to trying to draw thin lines with a fat pastel - a similar problem to what you were experiencing with the head parts of your stag beetle. If drawn on a six foot canvas, there would be no problem. Drawn with chunky pastels on a piece of board smaller than A4 makes it tricky. I'm not making excuses (well, actually I suppose I am) but I wish I could work on a larger scale! Unfortunately, decent oil pastels cost a fiver each, so it's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. The pastels I used for this particular picture are more than forty years old, so it was partly an experiment to see if they'd still work. They'd become hard and dry, so blending was tricky, but the colours were still true, and I had great fun with them. Thanks for taking such a detailed look at this one. It's appreciated. I get far better arty comments on this forum than on a couple of dedicated art forums I visit.

And thank you John, too - just spotted your comment.

[Danté]

Delph_ambi, I appreciate what you say about the fat pastels and to be fair, as a piece of art it's certainly a picture which would look great in a frame and would be appreciated for its qualities. As you point out, I've had similar obstacles to work around doing small pictures with chunky pencils and I'm beginning to realise that posting large images which on a big computer screen end up bigger than the original does make it hard for a viewer to see beyond the means of the creating of the piece of art. Having the piece stood at home where the usual viewing distance is applied makes a massive difference. I've taken to photographing some pictures as scanners tend to overcook some aspects of light and colour shades whilst seemingly ignoring others and coming up with a representation which can be tonally misleading. The abstract piece you posted a while back is a different proposition when printed and viewed from a distance, it comes to life in a big way. I have impressionist leanings which will make some of my work vulnerable to highly back-lit representations on a computer screen. I have my pc heavily tweaked to work with colour profiles in respect of print image matching because I do some reasonably serious photography and do from time to time produce pictures for others so I have had to get it as good as I can. PG is pretty good in general for feedback as there are some participants who are very detail orientated and will often look at things very deeply before offering their thoughts. The pastels look great and to have an aged set is a real asset, I'll get some in the future and have a tinker

all the best

Danté

[delph_ambi]

Interesting point about photographing rather than scanning. I always tend to scan smaller pieces as I know that way there will be no distortion. I have no idea how to photograph something and make it come out 'square'. How is it done? (Short of paying a lot of money for a better camera.) With larger pieces I have to photograph, as my scanner will only go up to A4 and I don't have the software to stitch multiple scans together. The photos are better, undoubtedly, but I always end up cropping a little to square them off.

[marten]

I love the colors: the pinks in the sky reflected in the water, and the reds and browns on the hillside. I think though, that the castle could use a little more detail to make it more distinguishable. Really nicely done!

[delph_ambi]

Thanks Marten. The only way to get more detail into the castle would have been to make it much larger. It's less than an inch across, and the pastels are pretty chunky, so it was tricky at this scale, but I agree that more detail would have been an improvement.