Children are natural engineers of sand. That little boy might as well be wearing a hard hat for the effort of sand movement he’s about to dig into. His older sister has already figured out that hydraulics help the formation and destruction of sand forms. These are natural sand gods and goddesses.
My first exclusively studio piece in pastel had to be of these children. The sunny June beach morning had the rough surf so the kids couldn’t go swimming. Watching them at the beach gave me the information about color. Their play was too quick to capture in more than linear movement strokes. So I used my camera for the shapes and composition.
Generations of painters have picked children playing at the beach for visual topics. This is a popular image for the artist for many reasons: 1) children wear brightly colored clothing that give pep to the beach scene 2) children are almost nearly generic….you could fit almost any three year old into that little boy’s outfit and it would look the same. 3) young children are very cute and are always entertaining if you’re not having to take care of them at the same time of painting them 4) they like when you draw them.
UArt Sanded Paper 240 Grit was my paper grounds selection. Two hundred and forty makes a rough surface and I skipped the Nupastel drawing. Instead I sketched it out with charcoal pencil using the gum eraser. On that roughly sanded paper, I was not getting much action out of the gum eraser. The friction was constant and high so the drag of the eraser was halted and uneven.
Fortunately, this piece of the children was intended for color, not linear work in drawing. Once mapped out sufficiently, I pulled out my Unison and Sennelier soft pastels.
That’s when I started playing like a kid on the sanded paper. Color by friction…yes…that’s another joy of perpetual childhood.