Coastline Art

This is another one, in my so far mini series of Coastline art images.  Artist Quality Soft Pastels were drawn onto A3 size Watercolour Paper.  This means that some of the watercolor paper ridges show through.  A combination of Schmincke, Rowney (out of production narrow sticks) and Sennelier soft pastels were used. I waited a few weeks for the Sennelier set to arrive before finishing off the foreground of this image.  My main problem at the moment is working out how to sign completed artwork.  Soft Pastel sticks are too broad and clumsy to form letters and numerals, whereas various grades of charcoal pencils from Soft to Hard, seem to break away in their wood when the charcoal pencil is sharpened using a normal pencil sharpener, or a pastel sharpener, or a knife.  For the darker images, a white Pastel Pencil fairs no better.  It is pretty frustrating in this so far 'teach yourself' course of artistic development; that I am having more problems with signing rather than completing the work.

As usual, All Rights are Reserved: Roger Bennett 2015

I was due to start a three day art course called 'Imaging the Landscape' tomorrow, but alas, the course was cancelled due to what appears to be a lack of numbers.  It looks as if it was two of us.  Which is pretty sad as I had built myself up to attending this pastel art course and was really looking forward to the three days spread over several weeks as being part of my springboard to better pastel artwork.  Worse still I had been forewarned by several others that this particular institution often cancels adult learning courses due to poor uptake.  I don't know if that's true, and I don't for one moment suspect that such last minute cancellations are deliberate, but I do wish that they get their marketing act together and go ahead with this intended high end stuff.  It appears in a prospectus, but the bottom line is that adult learners probably don't look in a prospectus like an intending University Undergraduate.  We probably rely more on posters and advertisements being placed in the right places and in a timely manner.  It's not much use putting up a poster a week or so after the early bird discount date, that sorts of misses the point really.  So as you can see, the artwork is developing, but alas I am bitterly disappointed regarding the last minute cancelled pastel art course that I had paid for last month.

Meanwhile, I need to get back to practicing how to sign my finished pieces, before I go and cause a calamity and ruin a piece at the last hurdle.  Mmmm, I wonder if 'Imaging the Landscape' would have taught me how to sign my name?