Art day

When honeypie found in the closet old watercolor sets that belonged to mama long ago, she adopted those as her own, just like a perfect art lover would, gathering and collecting tools and inspiration for creating. (She had plans!)
I totally understand. I,myself, am an art supply hoarder.... there, I've said it. I don't think I am ashamed. There isn't an olive or jam jar I don't collect for future use. Egg cartons and toilet paper rolls will not be spared from my collection.
(So if you need some... You know where to go.)
Paper is my lover. Rice or origami, textured or colored, those seductions beckon my hands and I can't even begin to talk about brand new colored pencil sets or the smell of inks without sighing... Mmmmmm.
Today she found Daddy's pastel set and mine from when we were in art school together and added that to her collection. She then asked me to show her how to use the pastel chalks.
So that's what we did today .
Who to better introduce pastels than the master himself... Degas.
I love this series of children's art books by Laurence Anholt.
The one we read today is called "Degas and the little dancer".
It tells the story of how Degas came to meet "Marie", the little ballerina who posed for him as he created his "little dancer" sculpture.
It also tells the reason why Degas began to sculpt and to use pastels as his art medium. (He began to loose his eyesight.)














Today we just worked on a still life using apples. With the pastels, honeypie tried to capture the lights and darks she saw while working on dimension.
We used textured colored paper which works best with pastels, (better than white paper) brings their colors out. Chalk pastels are easy to use and great to blend with your fingers!
Chalk pastels are different than cray-pas... which are oil based pastels. Those are a whole other medium all together and I'll talk about them another day.



















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