CPS hosts a number of pastel demos throughout the year.
The images below are from our last event by Christine Ivers on March 24, 2012.

For those of you who want to see the demo again or, were not able to attend Chris’s pastel demo at Gallery 53, Meriden, CT, please click on the images for enlargements.

Some notes about Christine Ivers’s presentation:

Chris enjoys painting both daytime and nighttime scenes for the subject matter. This demo shows her approach for a nighttime scene, actually more of a twilight scene, in this case. To gather material, she takes numerous photographs; from these, she selects the compositions she likes best. She rarely if ever manipulates the photograph itself, but rather prints it out, works up a scale drawing from the print, and in doing so decides what areas to simplify or to leave out.

Chris works on boards that she prepares, usually gatorboard with coats of black gesso mixed with pumice. Some boards incorporate random brushwork, some show parallel strokes, and some she tries to get even.

Although she often uses underpaintings, for this demo she did not but went right to work with medium and soft pastels. Chris mentioned that she commonly starts at the top and works down, working on each area to some degree before moving on, rather than developing the entire painting all at once the way some artists do. (Additional notes accompany the pictures.)