Edgar Degas as an Inspiration

Many girls, I am sure, have been fascinated by the Edgar Degas' artwork in which he has captured ballerinas. They are probably his most enduring works to date. I remember first getting a glimpse of them and loving how he seemed to capture the moment, just like as if he was taking a photograph at any random moment. It didn't feel rigid and posed. One of my favorites of his is captured above. I did this one myself, but I still feel as if his is by far the superior one.

A lot of Edgar Degas work was done in pastel and I think his work inspired me to be more conscious of the effects of pastel. I am speaking of oil pastels, but some of the more chalky kind of pastels can still ellude a similar effect. The neat thing with oil pastels is that they give a similar effect that oil paints capture. Oil seems to give a lot of depth to images. This may be why I prefer to work with oils more and more.

Not long before I started using pastels, did I only have access to watercolors. I think as children we mostly exposed to crayons and watercolors. Watercolors are easy as a child because they are easy to clean up after, use mostly primary colors, are fairly cheap and fun. But, if you want to paint in watercolor and be good at it, that's another story!

Watercolors were very difficult for me to grasp. But, since I only had those and pastels to work with, I had to sort of teach myself techniques in which to grasp them. Keep them restrained and not runny. I wanted rich, deep colors from watercolors, but they'd always turn out flat and lifeless. By the time I turned about 17 or 18, did I finally figure out how to get them right. Please look at the following examples:

As you can see, I really tried to make them have some depth. Again, this was self taught. I was about 16 when I did the one on the left and about 18 when I did the one on the right.

When I first discovered John Singer Sargent's work, it was maily my admiration for his excellent skill in watercolor. Till this day I cannot find myself admiring anyone else more than him. He was precise and exact, yet free flowing. The picture on the right demonstrates me trying to copy a John Singer Sargent painting.

Learning various techniques helped me grasp the idea that water colors can be vibrant and have depth, but just not in the same way as oil paints.