I’ve fallen in love! My current favourite medium is pastels. After completing the hare tutorial by Eunice Friend, I had to find another tutorial. I soon came across a website called Colin Bradley School of Art. There I spotted the most beautiful Siamese Kitten. How could I not attempt to draw this little fluffy girl.
Colin Bradley has been working with pastel pencils for over 30 years and the business is being run by Colin, and his son, Steve.
There are several different ways to access Colin’s courses. You can purchase the individual classes for around £10 per class. The other option is a membership. His membership includes access to all his courses. As I had never completed one of Colin’s courses before, I chose to pay for the individual course.
THE SIAMESE KITTEN IN PASTEL PENCIL
There is a warming appeal about a family run business, and Steve and Colin come across as a delightful father and son team.
The Siamese Kitten comes under the Intermediate section of courses. As many of you may know, I’ve only completed one pastel drawing before, and that was the Hare. This course is for pastel pencil, and I completed it on Pastelmat.
Colin has a lovely warm tone to his voice. Throughout the tutorial he is chatty and informative. However, his approach may not be for everyone. Colin is fantastic at ensuring you know which pencil number he is using, allowing you to always be in control of your painting. Yet, the video isn’t 100% real-time. There are moments when he jumps forward having shown the basic technique. Colin demonstrates how to do one eye and the fur around that eye, but then leaves you to complete the other eye and fur around that area on your own. This kind of approach occurs multiple times with the reason that the video would be far too long.
My view is that I don’t care how long the video is, I would prefer to have the whole video in real-time. Therefore, I would not recommend this particular course to beginners. Having not tried one of Colin’s beginner courses, I cannot pass comment on them. However, if you’re a bit daring or are, indeed, an intermediate and don’t mind being left to figure out some bits, then Colin has an immense amount of fantastic courses available.