In March 2020 PASA had a 'Flower Portrait' workshop booked with Queenland Master Pastellist, Lyn Diefenbach.  Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus it was cancelled, hopefully to be re-booked at a future date. However, as we were to have our flowers drawn up before the workshop, and had put aside that weekend for painting anyway, I suggested everyone go ahead and paint their flower. Many did, with beautiful results, and they were shown on the PASA Facebook page. For those of you who didn't see them there, I would like to describe my 'Flower Portrait' progress steps. We were asked to use Uart 600 grade sanded pastel paper, a first for many of us. It is a very fine toothed paper, much less rough than AS Colourful, but not as smooth as AS Colourful Smooth. This was as off white coloured paper. Uart make seven grades of paper from 240 (very rough) through to 800 (extra smooth). They also make a black paper in grades of 400, 600 and 800. In Australia we can purchase Uart paper from www.softpastels.com.au.

I decided to use diluted AS Pigmented Inks as an underpainting to see how they performed on the Uart paper. I don't think I would again as the paper buckled quite a bit. I think AS Colourful is a much more robust paper for wet effects. As I covered the entire paper with pastels, I could have eliminated this step. I used a variety of pastels from AS Soft (original), Winsor & Newton, some very soft Terry Ludwig and Schminke pastels before using a few pastel pencils to sharpen up the details. I worked through my background before painting the flower, turning the paper every now and then so I didn't get dark pastel dust over the more delicate colours of the flower. I hope you enjoy viewing the painting steps and the finished result.

Words and pictures by Lesley Jorgensen,

PASA Workshop Convenor.