Pastels With Pat
Whenever I have the pleasure of pulling up to the “Laing Orchards” I can never resist taking loads of photos.
Their property is so beautiful with tons of trees, flowers, animals, and interesting buildings.
After a nice lunch at The Beerded Dog pub we headed back over to the farm where we hoped that Pat would give us a wee tutorial on using pastels.
I met Pat and Dewar in our University of Windsor art class and they are both very talented artists among many other things. I was Pat’s ‘Maid of Honour’ many years ago and she was also my choreographer when I played “Roxie Hart” in the Canadian Premier of the musical, “Chicago”.
Dewar is still a lawyer but Pat cannot dance anymore due to incredible back pain. Ugh. But nothing really stops these two. When they moved to the country from downtown Windsor they immediately immersed themselves in the community from running their apple orchard to encouraging school tours of their wee petting zoo, farm, and then having the guests stop in to sample Pat’s award winning jams and sweets.
They have put on huge rodeos, Dewar writes for the local paper sometimes, and currently, they have a huge quonset where they teach riding and provide the space for folks to keep their horses. They also have dogs and goats and we once saw a donkey walk out of their back door!
Although Pat was sore she set up all her pastels at the table, provided the easels, paper, and other things we needed to experiment with our first pastels.
We both learned SO much. Dewar told us that most of the famous oil painters actually worked with pastels when they were doing their plein air paintings which makes sense when you try to imagine them carrying all the oil painting gear outside.
But I found working with the pastels a lot more difficult than using paints. Perhaps this was just because it was our first time but I don’t think I’ll be switching anytime soon.
Pat is a wonderful artist and teacher and we learned about the difference in artist papers , the pastels themselves, and how to apply them with various techniques.
I experimented with the same image but using 2 different types of paper. Very interesting! Terry used a different technique from me which involves more smudging. It was really fun and here is what we came up with on our little papers…..
I’ve been very blessed to have these visits with our dear friends out here in Ontario.
Thanks, Pat, for taking the time to give us this lesson. We loved it . We love you!