The portrait of your wife is very well done, she has a kind smile. Pastel chalk as a medium is still foreign to me, even though I bought it once but haven’t used it yet.
It's a cheap one for children I think, lacks deep, dark colors. Maybe I'll try it on dark paper.
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Thank you. Haven't done too many portraits, maybe a dozen or so. Still practicing.
Children's chalk is not pastel, too coarse, too bleak. Sounds like you got a hold of Van Bleiswijk, the rock bottom discount brand of Talens Amsterdam. Square shape, relatively hard.
If you want excellent pastels on a budget I can recommend Toison d'or by Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth, a Czech company. 72 colors about 70 EUR. If you buy cheaper, you'll buy twice.
However, almost more important is the paper. Regular paper doesn't take enough layers, and dark regular paper makes it worse since you can't get your highlights in. Bare minimum is an ingres paper. The best paper is Pastelmat by Clairefontaine, however, it's VERY expensive (3-4 EUR for 1 30x40 sheet) and watercolor underpaintings bleed too much.
I like using Liquitex Clear Gesso over watercolor paper. This gesso is the only one with just the right amount of absorbent grit. Accepts all waterbased media w/o bleeding and the gritty, almost sanded texture allows multiple layers of pastel. Since it's clear it can be applied OVER the underpainting or selectively only in certain areas. The pigment color payoff with this gesso is unbelievable! It also works extremely well with colored pencils. Rich colors all the way around.
That's OK, children in poor families will be happy for them. I've bought them in Lidl for 10 Euros.
I know that Czech brand, my son used it when he was 10 years old, but that had only 6 colors. If i have more money, I will also buy a larger set and paper. For now, i only use watercolors and acrylic that I love.
Gesso? A great idea! My watercolor instructor, Lami said I could even paint on canvas, after i prepared it with gesso.
I think i have to start producing NFTs (half traditional, half digital) now and bringing them to market, at a not-so-high price for now. This, in turn, requires some HIVE balance in the NFT Showroom (well, i always power up 100% until my HP grows to 1000). Even if my NFT sales only cover my material costs, it’s already worth it to me!
Only the Liquitex Clear Gesso has the right grit to work with pastel. I'm sure there are one or two others, but this one is CLEAR. Regular gessos are rather smooth and not very suitable for watercolor. You need to find the right one for that.
It can't hurt to try the NFTs but I haven't had much luck with them, so don't expect too much. There is simply too much amazing competition ;-) Check your account on HiveEngine: You may already have enough tokens to sell for a few Swap.Hive on the NFT Showroom!
https://hive-engine.com/
However I think you're better off just posting your art slow and steady until you build a loyal following. It takes time; Hive is a marathon, not a sprint. Look at some artists here, they can pretty much write their own check just by publishing in OnChainArt. And if you look at their accounts, you'll find this didn't happen overnight :-)
Thanks for your help! As I see it, people here are very helpful and happy to share their knowledge. In Hungary, especially among professional artists, this is unfortunately not typical, they are jealous of their secrets and often do not value each other's work. I don't want to be one of those people. The atmosphere is different in the company of amateur artists, but there is even a lack of constructive criticism and praise for shoddy works. For N F T (and whatever), I think the most important thing is a good idea, which can be either funny or astonishing, related to the problems of the world, etc. I find that my natural watercolor stuff (for example birds, flowers), which I often work on for days, doesn’t hit the stimulus threshold, but some of my abstract scribbles do it.
Yes, that's possible. You won't know until you try it. Just don't waste a lot of money minting 100 NFTs just to get stuck. Try it slowly. Good luck!