The Secret to Sparkling Pastel Ornaments Revealed

December 18, 2024 by Alain Picard in Art Instruction

I'm sharing my painterly technique for creating ethereal, shimmering Christmas ornaments in pastel! Join me for a special painting session where I'll reveal my secrets for capturing that ephemeral holiday sparkle.✨

You know those moments when light catches a delicate ornament just right? In this lesson, we'll learn how to capture that magic with pigment. I'll guide you through each step of creating luminous holiday ornaments in soft pastel that seem to glow from within.

Watch the Lesson

What I'm revealing today:

The painterly technique behind that shimmering glow
My layering secrets for achieving dreamy, pastel effects
The surprisingly simple method for adding mesmerizing highlights

Whether you're a seasoned artist or just beginning your creative journey, these techniques will add a beautiful new dimension to your holiday paintings.

It's the season of wonder, and I want to celebrate with you! So let's create some holiday magic together!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas, with abundant creativity and joy in the coming year.🌟

Alain Picard

A New Lesson To Inspire You!

August 23, 2023 by Alain Picard in Art Instruction

Are you looking for inspiration today?
Look no further!

I’ve got a brand-new video lesson for you to get those creative juices flowing. Let’s paint a vine ripe red tomato together so we can enjoy the richness of painting with red as we practice using deep values and saturated colors. This luscious little painting will take you less than an hour to create and provide you with a wonderful jolt of inspiration.

Red is an inspiring color, but it can be deceiving to paint. If it gets too light, we'll lose valuable color impact.

In this video, we’ll cover how to keep your color values on target, so your vine ripe tomato looks deliciously rich and red. Are you ready to paint a red tomato together? Join one of our upcoming classes or workshops where we explore different techniques together.

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4 Ways to Make Your Mark

August 10, 2023 by Alain Picard in Art Instruction

Mark-making is the vocabulary we use to communicate with the viewer.

Through marks, we can speak quietly or loudly, be subtle or bold. Transcribing marks onto the surface of the artwork should be as unique as each individual. This is not time to hide behind excessive blending! Allow your creative voice to come through loud and clear in the conversation. Color and value are powerful tools in the hands of the artist, but marks transfer them from vision to surface.

Have you taken some time to consider the impact of your mark making?

Setting apart time to develop a personal vocabulary of marks is important, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating!

Here are four tips to help you foster a dynamic conversation with the viewer through your marks:

1️⃣ Experiment with Various Marks

The first step toward a broader vocabulary is to learn the various ways your pastel sticks can create marks. Experiment! Take some time to investigate and develop a greater awareness of the types of marks available to you with pastels. Consider how important the direction and pressure of each stroke is to the result.
Practice making marks on a scrap sheet of paper using the tip, sides, corners of your pastels to create a variety of strokes. Use bigger and smaller sticks of pastel to vary your stroke size, and notice how the harder pastels create a finer mark while softer pastels produce a more painterly stroke.

It may seem frivolous, but this kind of exploratory creative play will bring about new discoveries and broaden your mark making vocabulary.

The Linear Pear, 8x6” pastel on Pastelmat

2️⃣ Use Only Linear Marks

Create a small painting using only linear marks to hatch, crosshatch and stipple without any blending. This is an amazing exercise, because you’ll learn how to create shape and tone by layering the linear marks instead of smudging pigments around to create a gradation. This results in a dynamic play of color and a stimulating energy of line.

The Sculpted Pear, 8x10” pastel on Anthracite Pastelmat

3️⃣ Use Only Side Strokes

Another great mark-making exercise is to create a small painting using only the side of your pastels to make strokes of varying lengths and directions. This will help you to develop a more sculptural approach to pastel painting that resembles the brush strokes of an oil painter. Carve and sculpt the subject with your marks, taking care to use a light touch so you can apply multiple layers.

4️⃣ Make Your Mark!

After practicing a variety of mark-making approaches, it’s time to integrate these techniques and learnings into your work and make them your own. Create a small painting as a personal response to all the techniques you’ve learned, and celebrate your favorite strokes! Mix and match, layer and glaze, stipple and stroke your way to a beautiful finish that is both joyful and personal.

Let these four mark-making tips empower your next creative conversation, and may your marks be loud and clear!

Learn how to create expressive marks with master artist and instructor Alain Picard

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Mineral Spirit Wash - Part Two

June 07, 2016 by Alain Picard in Art Instruction

This is it...the final installment in our seven-part UART underpainting series is here with Part Two of the mineral spirit wash. As the sun sets over Cisco Beach in this final painting, our series has come to a close. Thanks for all the amazing feedback and encouragement you've given regarding the relevance of these instructional videos. They clearly struck a chord with you all. Please leave a post on the blog to let me know what you think about this last video.

I'd love to know what you really want to learn from me in upcoming instructional videos. As I dream and plan for the next series, your feedback would be so incredibly helpful. Portraits, still life, landscape, specific techniques, materials questions, or anything else on your mind? Just leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts. Be as specific as you can about where you would like guidance. Thank you so much in advance!

Enjoy the beautiful June weather, and be inspired!

Mineral Spirit Wash - Part One

May 31, 2016 by Alain Picard in Art Instruction

Our underpainting series continues with Part One of the final underpainting technique in the series, the mineral spirit wash. This collaboration with UART to demonstrate a variety of underpainting methods has been such fun. Please let me know what you think about this "local color" method of underpainting by leaving a comment on the blog!

My wife and I will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary on Thursday, June 2. This video pays homage to one of our favorite places to vacation, and the site of our first honeymoon visit. I hope you enjoy watching a glorious sunset over Cisco Beach, Nantucket, develop in the medium of pastel. It’s a reminder to me of a treasured memory, and more importantly of how fortunate I have been to share the last 15 years with my lovely wife Mirjam.

Art About Town, Opening Night Street Party

May 31, 2013 by Alain Picard

Live Street Portraits by Alain J. Picard

Westport's Art About Town kicked off with an opening night street party on Thursday night, May 30. I had a wonderful time painting live pastel portraits on the streets of downtown Westport. With all the hustle and bustle of the crowd, the excitement of artists painting, live dance performances, and music, it really was an amazing experience.

6 Basic Skin Types

May 14, 2013 by Alain Picard in Skin Tones

While there is a vast array of beautiful people throughout the world and a multitude of ethnic backgrounds, I find it helpful to group them into 6 basic skin types in order to approach the process of painting skin tones in a pastel portrait. Here is a chart I've created representing the 6 basic skin types; pale, fair, medium, olive, naturally brown, and very dark brown/black. My portrait palette box is organized to represent all of these skin types so that I'm always prepared for any skin type I may encounter. Samples of each skin type are represented below.

If you're passionate about honing your skills in drawing realistic and expressive skin tones, we invite you to join our Painterly Portraits Course. In this comprehensive course, we delve deeply into the art of capturing various hair, skin tones, and facial features with pastels to give your portraits the best photo-realistic look.

Skin Tone Chart

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My Secondary Palette Box

May 07, 2013 by Alain Picard in Pastel Materials

In my last post I shared how I set up my Pastel Palette for Portraits today I want to dive into my secondary setup.

This is my secondary palette box. This box of six rows is organized by color families from left to right. Beginning at the left and moving right you'll see cool violet/warm violet, red and orange, yellow/warm green, green/blue-green, blue, and finishing with neutral grays. As always, I've placed light values at the top, and dark values at the bottom. This palette is wonderful for backgrounds for my portrait subjects as well as just about anything else from still life to landscape. My compliments to John Heilman for the great travel box from HeilmanDesigns.com

In our Painterly Portrait course we not only talk about how to create amazing portraits using pastels but we also talk about efficiency strategies such as this to make your painting time fun and stress-free.