Master Pastellist Penelope Gilbert Ng shows us the elements needed to create a story in our artwork with figures – the importance of story, of tone, the freedom to adjust composition and colours to suit the artist (eg move fence posts, change angles) Penelope always creates a thumbnail to sort out tones and composition and keeps a record of what pigments or pastels are used. 

Master Pastellist Tricia Reust demonstrates the usefulness of an underpainting done with pastel and water in both overcoming the fear of working on a blank canvas, making the painting process easier and helping to create a better painting. Tricia demonstrates both a portrait and a seascape.

Maxine Thompson from NZ talks about her travels and her paintings. Note there is some background noise, the sound is a bit echoey as the room has not great acoustics and there is minimal editing - you are getting a 'live recording' noises and all

Anne Yang paints a spacious cultivated garden (Fishermans Bay Garden NZ) with a watercolour underpainting on white Art Spectrum paper. Anne discusses how she is attracted to the light in a scene, how to get the viewers eye move around a painting and the importance of good composition from the beginning. A writeup of this demo can be found in the August 2023 edition of the PSA newsletter.

Petronella talks about "Opposites Attract" and demonstrates how to intentionally juxtapose various design elements in our art and shows the captivating interplay of contrasts that can be achieved using soft pastels. Note to better see the overhead, the lights are partially off during the first part of this video.

Master Pastellist Louise Corke shares with us her thought process in approaching both large and small paintings and the different choices and challenges we have to consider when preparing a painting. While the big painting was not completed in this demo, Louise talked through how she would approach it, she considered directional flow with horizontal, vertical and curved or diagonal movements, Louise creates interest by having her area of focus, the backlit horizontal movement situated at the almost top third in the work. 

Chris' demonstration was about the struggle some artists have to – LOOSEN UP their paintings to look effortless, more painterly and impressionistic. She shows some concepts on how to use a simplified approach of focusing on large shapes of dark medium and light tones, to create and design a dynamic composition. Benefits of simplification mean you get translation from complex to simple. 

Tricia did this portrait of her father worked on a collaged surface. 

Penny used a very quick somewhat unfocussed snap taken from a moving train of a lady and 2 children waiting for a train as her reference photo. She did a thumbnail sketch, transferred that to the paper, did a watercolour underpainting, then added pastel on top, adjusting the tone and colour, light and shadow.

Tricia give a very clear description of how shadows have colour, and how that colour is affected by the temperature of the light. After a demonstration of both cool and warm light on a subject, Tricia starts the painting of a little girl in a rainbow dress at the beach.