Plucked from my garden, this Florida rose is a tea-rose size. I picked it to pose for the Rose pastel for ChiChi. ChiChi is not her full name nor do I know it. But I know this lovely lady from Kenya is one of the softest hearts and wisest minds I’ve met in our school version PTA.
Started with Primsacolor’s NuPastel, I played with my old gorgeous collection of Dakota pastels and a variety of soft pastels whose names are gone. The papers they came wrapped in are long disintegrated. But pigment stays firmly pressed into the conical shapes of color.
Flower painting stretches me. They are too much like fabric folds that constantly shift. So I sat with this rose for two days of working the shapes up. My eyes look for the 5 basic shapes: circle, triangle, oval, square and rectangle. Flowers are organic so often trump my sight. Photographing the flower helps to keep the original vision intact while the flower fades in virility over many days. On the computer, punching up the graphic into larger format helps me finish what I could no longer see live.
Most important to me in this piece is the vibrancy of the colors. I hit it with the blue vase in parts but didn’t fully achieve it with the rose itself. The drawing is a start but not the finish I was looking for. I’m not warmed up enough yet. That’s why I purchased the 120 half sticks by Sennelier. These are soft pastels with nearly 100% pigment. Very little binder makes a freshness in the vibrancy of colors that takes oil paint days to build up to mimic. At least it takes that kind of time when I’m painting in oils. That’s why I like pastels. It’s the immediacy of response that I like working with.
In this part of my life, I suppose it’s a metaphor for what I expect from friendships: I want that vibrancy and less of the nonsense fillers.