Artist toolkit with Phoebe Stone

This month’s Artist’s toolkit is with Australia based artist, Phoebe Stone.

I’m very excited for Phoebe's oil pastel drawing class on the 10th January.

Here she shares some of her creative tips….

 

1. Start. As a busy mum, with limited time, I often find when I get a chance to pop into the studio I don’t always feel that I am bursting with creativity. Such a pain we can’t turn it on like a tap! However, I find that if I just get my hand moving on anything that it helps me get into the flow. I will often just grab a piece of paper and start drawing something in my studio, or something I could draw from memory, like an oyster. I often find it easier to start a new work, or am ready to work on an unfinished piece after this. And if not, I have learnt to not be hard on myself and do something else instead, perhaps go for a walk or sit down with a coffee and some art books to drink in.

 

2. Snap! Snap! Snap! I draw a lot of still life or interior scenes and I often do this from photographs. Wherever I am, if I see something that catches my eye and/or heart, I take a photo, I may not commit it to board straight away, it could be 6months to a year before I feel ready to do that, but my phone has an extensive library of imagery that I can scroll through and see what resonates with me on any given day in the studio.

 

3. Oil Pastels are messy! Embrace it! I know it drives a lot of people insane, but I love how messy oil pastels are, they are a great lesson in letting rigidity go and being more free with your mark making. Just have some baby wipes handy.

4. Experiment with different types of pastels, hard to soft. I tend to layer the softer more lipsticky pastels (Sennelier) over harder pastels (Holbien/Van Gogh) but you can also use the harder ones to sort of scratch into a layer of thicker oilier marks.

5. Mix up the paper you use. No need to stick with white, try drawing on some blue or yellow paper, it can make a huge difference to how your artwork reads, have some fun browsing your art store for interesting tones and textures.