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Springtime in Soft Pastel
Soft Pastels are quite an unique medium to work with. If you know what you’re doing, you can create stunning artworks with it. Giving it this very special feel and atmosphere this medium rewards you with.
But let’s face it, if you haven’t mastered the right techniques, the right procedure and mindset of how to go about it, you’ll just create a big mess and end up somewhat frustrated.
Now the good news is, that it actually is not hard at all to learn the basics of working with Soft Pastels. With the right information and acquired skills you’ll be making beautiful works in no time.
Springtime in Soft Pastel
Soft Pastels are quite an unique medium to work with. If you know what you’re doing, you can create stunning artworks with it. Giving it this very special feel and atmosphere this medium rewards you with.
But let’s face it, if you haven’t mastered the right techniques, the right procedure and mindset of how to go about it, you’ll just create a big mess and end up somewhat frustrated.
Now the good news is, that it actually is not hard at all to learn the basics of working with Soft Pastels. With the right information and acquired skills you’ll be making beautiful works in no time.
My name is Benjamin Aeilkema and I’m an illustrator and Artist from The Netherlands. I love creating Artworks with all kinds of materials. Lately Soft Pastels have captured a special place in my heart. Once I got over the setbacks, which can be severe without the right techniques, and cracked the code of how to work with this impressive medium, I totally fell in love with it.
In this Art Class I’m going to reveal the code I cracked to make working with Soft Pastels great fun and super rewarding. Using the beauty of different kind of spring flowers, I will take you step-by-step into the wonderful world of Soft Pastels.
We’ll start out with sketching some snowdrops, getting familiar with our Soft Pastels. Then we’ll look at bringing in more details into our work, enhancing the beauty greatly. Next we’ll be working on creating different kinds of backgrounds. We will also be looking at how to make use of the paper color you might have. Of course we will get into mastering different kind of blending techniques, applying them to a variety of lovely spring flower projects.
My clear and easy to follow explanation and instructions, make sure that this entire process is going to be great fun. You will be surprise at what you can create with your Soft Pastels, using my step-by-step method.
For your convenience I’ve also added additional PDF’s: Great Time Savers in PDF format
To help you save time, I’m providing you with a handy book of notes. Once you’ve completed an assignment, there’s no need to re-watch the video lesson. Instead, all of my finished works are in this booklet. Just find the lesson you’re on and compare your work to the finished assignment in the book. Again, this will save you time and allow you to keep on going.
That’s not all though.
I’ve also included photo references in this booklet. You’ll find photos of all the flowers I’ve used in the lessons and even some extra ones for more practice. This addition will help you to work in any season, regardless of which flowers do or don’t grow. While I encourage you to get your own reference material, I understand that’s not always possible. So with this addition you have plenty of reference material to get you started and keep you drawing.
So come and join the fun and start creating lovely artworks today.
Explaining what this Art Class is all about.
A general overview of the materials we will use in this Art Class. Each session has a specific video on that too.
Introducing what we do in this section.
The materials you need for this section. You can also download the booklet with references you may need for this section.
Our first step.... drawing some leaves.
What are leaves without a flower?
In the spring it can still snow, let's add that to enhance our scene a bit.
Let's draw our first more detailed single flower.
Each section will have a project that will help you to recap what we've learned and practice to grow even more confident in it.
Instead of creating some flowers first, we're going to add a background for texture effects.
Blocking is a special technique you can use to get started with drawing an object with soft pastel.
Flowers don't float in the air, let's addd the stalks.
Since we're creating a scene, let's add some rocks.
Crocus flowers have leaves, let's add them.
Next step for the flowers is defining them.
After the flowers the rocks now need some details too.
Let's add a bit more interest to this drawing by adding a fence in the background.
A quick example of how to do a background in case you don't have colored paper. If you have colored paper, you can skip this lesson. We'll do more in-depth backgrounds in the next session.
The first step for the flower in the foreground
Detailing this first flower.
Floating flowers again? No way, let's add the stalk.
Drawing the second Flower.
Adding some basic shadows and highlights to the flowers.
Another stalk.
Adding some deeper shadows for contrast.
To enhance the composition a bit, we're going to add a leaf.
I'm not totally happy with the shape of the first flower, this lessons shows how to correct your work.
Let's create some interesting dark backgrounds ourselves, instead of relying on the paper color only.
What's a background without some flowers? Right, empty, so let's add flowers to some of the backgrounds.
We need to cover the black nicely with color.
Let's make this flower a bit more pretty.
The drawing is a bit flat at the moment, let's do something about that.
Starting to look good, but we can do better.
Let's get to the heart of the matter.
A completely black background might be a bit boring, let's add a little color to it.
Let's start with drawing the Background. Later on that will be hard to do. We're also going to draw the first tulip.
Drawing another Tulip.
Three is key.
To make the tulips really stand out from the paper, we'll add some flowers for contrast.
It's not a field with tulips yet, let's make sure it will be.
Time to finish this drawing by adding some more contrast.
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