Workshop Content: This 3 day workshop will teach you how to paint with soft pastels in a layered manner to create colorful and impressionistic-style paintings. We will use several underpainting techniques to get our creative juices flowing, tone the paper, and give us interesting edges and shapes to work from.

Day 1: Let’s paint pears! We will paint one pear, about 6X8, on any paper you bring, to get a feel for layering. In the afternoon, we will paint the same pear with an alcohol wash underpainting.

Day 2: We will paint a 9X12 landscape using a watercolor underpainting. The sanded papers will eat up a paintbrush so make sure to bring a cheap, old brush if possible.

Day 3: Let’s paint clouds, one of my favorite things to paint! We will use value from our reference photo as a guide to painting colorful clouds. Students can choose to either do a watercolor or alcohol wash underpainting. Don’t be intimidated, all of these techniques are beginner friendly! Feel free to email me with any questions!

Supply List: Instructor will provide 2 9X12 sheets of pastel paper commonly used by instructor (ie, UArt, Pastelmat, Lux Archival, handmade with pastel ground; depending on number of sign-ups), rubbing alcohol, brushes to share, latex gloves, containers for rubbing alcohol to share.

Student will need to bring at least 2 sheets of their own paper. Canson Mi-tientes is a very inexpensive alternative to sanded papers and great for practice! They also need a selection of pastels. I use various brands including NuPastel, Terry Ludwig, Mount Vision, Great American, Sennelier and Blue Earth. If possible, bring some harder and some softer pastels to achieve the layered look. We start with the harder sticks to block in areas and finish with the buttery, soft pastels. Jerry’s carries several harder sticks to choose from: Mungyo is a cheaper alternative. There are also Cretacolor and Rembrandts. They also have sets from Sennelier, which are much softer, for the final layer. Please bring a tabletop easel, backing board to fit your paper and tape so we can work upright; allowing the dust to fall down and out of the way.

I will have some reference photos but feel free to bring your own. We will be painting a pear, a blue sky day with clouds, and a simple landscape of trees with a field of grass. I’m happy to email you the photo I’m using as well. Please bring gloves if possible, a small container to hold rubbing alcohol and an old, cheap brush to liquefy the rubbing alcohol. I will have all these things as well for the class to share. Day two will include a watercolor underpainting so please bring a small selection of watercolors. If you don’t have them, you can continue to use an alcohol underpainting.

Biography: My husband and I moved from Florida to Knoxville in 2017, where I taught third and fourth grade. We enjoyed having the Smoky Mountains in our backyard and the changing seasons.

After becoming a 900 miler, I was looking for a new hobby to try out. Google led me to the Oak Ridge Art Center where I signed up for a ‘Mixed Media’ class, having no clue what that really was! I fell in love with all the art supplies and soon after found soft pastels. I learned as much as I could and watched all the tutorials I could find. Now I teach painting with pastels at the ORAC Tuesday mornings.

I enjoy painting landscapes and florals and dabbling in many other mediums to learn how to enhance my pastel paintings. I enjoy learning myself and continue to take pastel workshops whenever I can.