Evaluating Still Life for Pastel Painting

Video Transcript

"When creating a still life I like to create a still life using objects that provide some textural interest, some little spots of color and I'm going to have one object that's the focal point of the whole thing. In this case our primary focal point is the blue kitten cat sculpture from Mexico from Xiaca that is in the center of the area. I've created a scarf to create a nice textured surface on which these other things and we've got the interesting texture in the flower. The flower pot itself has this nice woven texture as well as the texture along the bottom of that first pot. And notice that I've chosen two pots, two Mexican style handmade black pieces of pottery. Black is an interesting color because black in a painting and black in most nature is not black. Black, if you look at our sculpt, if you look at our still life. There's only one area on this still life where you see a true black and that's inside that second pot. The black of those two pots is full of color. There's a gray and I'm seeing some pinks reflecting from here and I'm seeing some of the red reflected on the underside of that pot. I'm seeing white highlights which are really grays and even got some blue tints in there with some yellow highlights on this side from this light on this side. There's a lot of color in black. So it's an interesting thing to draw and paint because in the painting you'll see that those black pots are full of rich tonalities that come alive in the painting."