Monday, February 5, 2018

Jypsi Layer 7

Jypsi in Repose by Sarah Rose x SBY
In keeping with my brief posts, this is a one shot.  Since she's not my NaMoPaiMo horse proper, I don't feel she belongs on the FB group feed... and she's not in focus to boot!  I'm on a strange computer with no PhotoShop and I really shouldn't bore you with how hard it was to get my recalcitrant and unfamiliar cell phone to disgorge this shot.  It was taken on an aluminum table in a Tucson back yard.

The visit with Rachel [Trails End Studio] was wildly successful and greatly appreciated, but it contained no painting.  Only one critical ingredient was missing at my folks', so I jogged 15 mins to Ace Hardware (only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun...) for Krylon Matte.  I am not going to try to re-supply stuff like Pearl Ex and brushes... not with just 4 days to go and an airplane ride home.  As of tonight I have done Layers 6 and 7.  She's gone from a medium claybank dun to what seems to me to be an incredible chestnut shading towards liver.  Alas no other pix were taken. Success!!  Success!!  I've been chuffed all afternoon.

Lessons learnt in these 2 layers include painting just a small area per brushful, something I knew from leather dyeing but was forgetting.  I also switched to using Q tips instead of brushes, simply because I'd brought none and Mom had only one she was willing to sacrifice.  (Who cares if it looks motheaten; it's a perfect dusting brush!  Thanks Mom!)  Surprisingly Q tips worked very well, once I learned to truly powder the pastels... and not scrub with the stem.  An earlier lesson was enforced:  Unlike leather dye, which lightens as it dries, the sealant darkens the pastel powder.  Since I'm going for liver chestnut -- and was despairing she'd ever get there! -- this is an entirely welcome effect.

Tackwise, I am working on another saddle blanket and dinking with the Carousel Set.  Thanks for reading!

2 comments:

  1. Oh, my!! That medallion is beautiful! I love the color and the shading you've done!

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  2. For what its worth, my favorite applicator for pastels is called a pastel smoothie. It's a fat round paintbrush that is flat on the end - they're ideal for smooshing and blending pastels. I found them at jerrys artarama and only have tried the soft ones.

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