Vase of Roses Advice using Pastel Pencils

Bonny has sent me her painting of the ‘Vase of Flowers’ project and asked for any tips and help I can give her to improve the painting, Bonny writes:

The flower arrangement became difficult for me because I thought I would be clever and fill in all the leaves at once. Bad idea! I ended up erasing all of the leaves so when I went to reapply the colour I realised I had crushed the paper and the colour was not holding. I used 103 and 140 for the background. I applied twice, but it did not get this smooth. Thank you, Bonny.

I think Bonny has been very brave in going it alone by changing many of the colours and adding the fallen rose. However the fallen rose would have looked better had it been on the other side (see black arrow). There is more room and would give the picture a better balance. Also the rose has been placed on the very edge of the flat surface, it looks as though it is about to fall off. If the flat surface was taken back a little say to the gold line this would solve this problem.Bonny has used a 103 ivory pastel pencil as a base colour for the blue 140. As 103 is a warm colour and 140 is a cool colour they do not work well together. It would have been better to have used 230 grey as a base colour then 140 blue would have been more compatible with a light cool grey base.Bonny’s decision to do all the leaves at once brings up a couple of points. First, you lose working the contrast out with each section of the flower arrangement as you go by pre-empting the colour in both tone and shading. Secondly this would be very tedious and would prompt the artist into rushing the process thus not doing the painting justice.I hope this advice helps Bonny and other pastel pencil artists out there. This project is one of many still life tutorials available for just £3.99 per month. Click here to learn more.