Trying out pastels

My grandad was an artist in his latter years and a very good one too.  When he died his wife gave me his art bits and bobs and told me he wanted me to have them as he thought I had potential - he'd seen some of the artwork I did in school and always told me I should carry on but - like I said life got in the way and I didn't do anything from the day I left school to that day when something made me lift a brush again - over 20 years later!  But better late than never and I plan to make up for lost time!  Anyway I found some pastel pencils in his little art collection and decided to give them a go.

Rose - pastel pencil for the Pastel challenge on  ID&P

Tulip from a photo by Marita on Paint my Photo

Day Lily from a photo by Victoria on Paint my Photo

I really enjoyed working with the pastels.  By this time I was posting work on ID&P and on Paint my Photo.  Paint my Photo is a fantastic site, a site where photographers post their photos and artists paint them secure in the knowledge that there will be no copyright issues.  The generosity of some of the very experienced photographers on the site is fabulous, as some artists go on to sell their work from the paintings they produce from their photographs.  Roy Simmons is the founder member of this site and is himself a very talented artist and a lovely lovely person.    Soon after I started dabbling in pastels Roy sent me a message asking if I would like his pastels which he no longer used to which I said 'Yes Please!!!' and very generously sent me a collection through the post -but not only pastels, some colouring pencils and watercolour pencils too!  It felt like Christmas all over again.  So I dabbled some more in pastels and really enjoyed using them

As with graphite I haven't done anything in pastels for quite a while.  The watercolours have completely taken over but I would like to go back to doing other mediums especially now, writing this is reminding me how much I enjoyed it!

Link to Paint My Photo