Hi Mark, thank you for your response. Glad to know that my lengthy comment is of some help for you. I will try to be as short as possible, but two points to add:
- choice of soft pastels:
Faber-Castell is very useful for its wide variety of colours in a small set, but I recommend you at least try using Schmincke. You don’t necessarily need to buy a huge set, but get a couple of sticks of the colours you most often use. Once you use them, you will soon realise Schmincke is much more creamy and sticks to the paper much better. Rembrandt is the hardest type of pastels in the items listed above, and you can utilize the edge of Rembrandt pastels to draw some thin lines.
Speaking of drawing thin lines, it is very difficult to draw details using soft pastels, especially when you use a relatively small paper. Pastel pencils are the first choice for some people in such a case, but my preference is to use “colour shaper”.
I used this for this wild trees piece almost everywhere, and maybe a better example is my “the waterfall within”. Without the colour shapers, I couldn’t possibly have completed all the details of the columnar joints, the leaves, and the water, i.e. EVERYTHING in a nutshell!
- exhibition plan to push yourself:
I wonder if you have some reasonable rental galleries or restaurant/cafes where you can exhibit your artworks in London. I think those who can constantly give themselves a new assignment have a strong probability of success in making their creativity blossom. Planning an exhibition is an effective means to put yourself in such a position. Actually, my “life per leaf” series was created because I needed to draw something very quickly so that I can prepare enough number of artworks in time for my exhibition at a local restaurant. The exhibition was planned sometime in Feb this year, but the owner asked me to make it earlier. I had to shorten my prep period by 10 days, so I wanted to draw something simple and yet beautiful. This is why I set my eyes on leaves drawings. Once I actually started working on this subject, it was way more difficult than I had imagined…but I could not give up because that was my responsibility. As it turned out, it became a very interesting series. In your case, it might be interesting to plan an exhibition in 6 months or maybe one year, focusing on the artworks of the same subjects drawn/painted using different mediums. Then you can orient all your practices from now on trying a variety of mediums which interest you towards this short-term goal. I understand how overwhelming the whole thing is, so you definitely need to give yourself a direction. An exhibition is a very specific and easy-to-understand plan to guide you through this chaotic realm of art.
All the best!(sorry, it’s NOT short at all) 