At the introduction to pastel workshop I taught at Meta4 Gallery in Port Perry last weekend, one of the students mentioned that a former instructor had told her she wasn't "allowed" to use pink in her paintings! I'm sure this must have been said in jest, or perhaps it was a playful way to make some legitimate point about colour (not sure what point that would have been, but I wasn't there, so...) but the comment stuck with me... Yesterday, I completed my first attempt at a painting using water-soluble oil paints (see below, more about that experience in a future blog posting).
Afterwards, I was trawling my photo files looking for inspiration for a pastel, and came across a bunch of fabulous shots from last summer's Caribana parade in Toronto. If you've never been to this celebration of Caribbean culture, you can hardly imagine the driving, finger-snapping, toe-tapping music and the fabulous costumes and floats--completely over the top. When I saw this shot, of a gorgeous woman hauling a personal float decked out in the glitteriest, most intense PINK I've ever seen in my life, I knew this was the image I wanted, to take on that "no pink" challenge! It was pure pleasure to paint, though differentiating all the wacky parts of the float with various shades of pink, peach, orange and yellow was a true challenge. Fun, eh? I found a few other inspiring shots in the file, so watch for more colourful figures to turn up in my "Figures" gallery. This one's for you, Leslie--be brave, and use pink whenever you want! :)
The students last weekend (many of them brand new to pastels) did some awesome work--I'll post some shots of them hard at it on the Workshop page soon.