My Introduction to Pastel

Last summer, Madi and I visited her grandma, whose friend was quite excited to meet us. She was a pastel artist and former instructor, and learning that Madi and I were artists, was excited to watch us work with her pastels. She guided us to the attic studio, cluttered with impressive old pastel paintings. And in the center, a massive collection of pastels of every shade imaginable. She asked us what we wanted to paint. Being unhealthily obsessed with this Brian Wilson/Smile project, there was only one thing I wanted to paint. So I showed her the following image, a rather pixelated snap from the infamous Fire sessions in which Brian made all the musicians wear firemen's helmets and brought a bucket of burning wood into the studio.

Our mentor immediately set to work carefully selecting the pastels I would need to bring my vision to life. Reds, browns, and quite a bit of grey. She brought up coffee and root beer for us as Madi and I painted away, the tones of Rachmaninoff wafting from her CD player. An hour or so later, we reached a stopping point. Our mentor kindly let us keep many of the pastels we used. Not the chalky, cheap ones you get from Michael's either - these were vibrant, oily, solid. They sure confused the TSA agents, whose machines consistently mistook them for fireworks. I meant to spend a day adding finishing touches after we got back, but never really got around to it. And now the pastels seem to have disappeared. Nevertheless, I think what I came up with is more than presentable in its current stage, and I'm proud of myself for attempting a new medium.

All to say, here it is!

In other news, I am finally very nearly done with part 3 of the Smile video, which has ballooned to about 50 minutes!