A commissioned piece that gave me a lot of creative freedom, this piece let me do some exploring with color and a medium I haven't used in a long time. Oil pastel comes in sticks of oil that go on like crayons, and with blending of different colors the oil becomes smoother, like oil paint. It is a difficult medium to work with because there's only so much pastel the paper can take, so the artist has to be careful not to over-saturate the page.
I'm very glad I got to work with color, because I really took advantage of it and tried to experiment with the varying shades and complementary colors to get some depth to the picture. The original photo print-out that I had was not a particularly good one, so I had to take some liberties with the colors--adding some purple and yellow to the pelican's head, some red and yellow into the wing feathers, and grays and greens into the water. It was challenging, but very rewarding for me (and trust me, the piece is much more vibrant in real life, the photo I took was not particularly well-done:)
