Pastels

Here is a collection of pastel paintings by me. All these scans are from photographs of my pastels because pastels cannot be directly scanned due to their physically fragile nature. Chalky pastels would rub off onto the entire scanner and oil pastels would stick to the rubber wheel. I will try placing a glass sheet in front of (not touching) the painting, this may work (to do). Select the thumbnail displayed to see the full resolution image.

Basel on the Rhein

A4
Soft Pastel. When I visited Switzerland in 1997 I stopped off in Basel and stayed in the hotel Kraft Aum Rhein, I spent many hours walking through the beautiful town and finally arrived back in the hotel sometime past 1am, impressed by the view outside of the hotel room (the room was very small) and still unable to sleep I started this pastel drawing of the view. Sometime after 2am I had finished as much as I could do, I had to sleep, so the right hand side of the drawing didn't get completely finished, but I like it anyway.

Winter at St Pauls

18"x12"
Oil Pastel. I went to St Pauls Cathedral in London to do some sketching, and when I returned home did this painting, set in Edwardian times, because I wanted to do some older style clothing which I think is more pleasing in pictures than modern clothing, or maybe that's just what we're used to.

Cities

A4
Soft Pastel. I did these paintings back at home from pictures I took while touring the respective cities namely: The Tour Eiffel in Paris, Tower Bridge in London (this is from the picture in my photos section).

Venus

18"x12"
Soft Pastel. This is a copy of ??? by ???, I really can't remember at the moment, but I'll look it up and fit in the names soon.

Toilet of Venus

18"x12"
Oil Pastel. This is a copy of The Toilet of Venus by Françios Boucher, I really like this school of painting and I'm also doing this one in oil paints.

Cats Lady

A4
Oil Pastel. This is a copy of Adorable Kittens by Wilhelm Schütze. I have a friend who likes cats so when I saw this I thought of her and ended up doing a copy of the painting. Copying is good practice as it forces you to work to a known result, enabling you to achieve what you want in your own works and meet your own vision later on.

Les Contamines

A4
Soft Pastel. I did this while on a driving holiday across the European continent. It's a ski resort in the Alps, no I don't ski I was just visiting/passing through.

Red Rock

A4
Soft Pastel. I did this while driving through Colorado, USA, near Denver in the Red Rock area, what a place, but it was very hot so I had to do this quick (about 1 hour - quick for me) and get back into the air conditioned car.

Potters Bar, Barnet, South Mymms Church, Trent Park and Ware

A4
Soft Pastel. Some views of my local area, all painted on site. In the painting of Barnet, if the area at the bottom looks a little bare that's because the storm clouds you see in the painting actually opened up and rain came down in bucket loads so I had to get out of there before I had a chance to put in any detail in the lower fifth area.

Vasa

A5
Soft Pastel. Some views of my mothers villiage in Cyprus. The house in the first picture is ours, the church in the second picture was built by my grand father and a few other local villagers. The third picture is a view of the local vineyards, a bit dry the time of year I was there.