July 2017: Working in Pastels. Demonstration. An evening with Rebecca de Mendonca
It was with great pleasure that the art society was able to welcome renowned pastel artist Rebecca de Mendonca, recently short listed for the 2017 Artist of the Year exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London.
Rebecca who lives and works here in the West Country originally trained as a theatre designer. The profession enabled her to use her creative abilities until she chose her current pathway. She describes herself as a ‘drawer’ rather than a painter; her preferred medium of pastels enables her to create stunning works of art from a diverse range of subjects.
She has superb powers of observation and advises that this is the key to successful representation of how we, as artists, can reproduce what we see onto our chosen format. Rebecca treated us to 3 demonstrations of how she achieves this.
A photograph of her young daughter inspired her initial drawing. With skill and dexterity Rebecca produced a lifelike and sensitive picture with accents of colour to depict light and shade transforming a simple subject into a charming picture. Watching her work through the process gave all those present real insight into what can be achieved by constant observation of the subject matter.
Her second demonstration showed how to capture the character of the individual, this time, a beautiful red setter with the use of loose lines and mark making…she really was able to make a complex process appear to be easy and her love of pastels was clearly apparent.
Finally Rebecca added extra touches to a portrait of her neighbour's collie, again making a portrait that was vivid and exciting.
For further information on Rebecca’s work and the courses that she runs please look at her website:
It was with great pleasure that the art society was able to welcome renowned pastel artist Rebecca de Mendonca, recently short listed for the 2017 Artist of the Year exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London.
Rebecca who lives and works here in the West Country originally trained as a theatre designer. The profession enabled her to use her creative abilities until she chose her current pathway. She describes herself as a ‘drawer’ rather than a painter; her preferred medium of pastels enables her to create stunning works of art from a diverse range of subjects.
She has superb powers of observation and advises that this is the key to successful representation of how we, as artists, can reproduce what we see onto our chosen format. Rebecca treated us to 3 demonstrations of how she achieves this.
A photograph of her young daughter inspired her initial drawing. With skill and dexterity Rebecca produced a lifelike and sensitive picture with accents of colour to depict light and shade transforming a simple subject into a charming picture. Watching her work through the process gave all those present real insight into what can be achieved by constant observation of the subject matter.
Her second demonstration showed how to capture the character of the individual, this time, a beautiful red setter with the use of loose lines and mark making…she really was able to make a complex process appear to be easy and her love of pastels was clearly apparent.
Finally Rebecca added extra touches to a portrait of her neighbour's collie, again making a portrait that was vivid and exciting.
For further information on Rebecca’s work and the courses that she runs please look at her website:
