Whale Watching

The piece of artwork that I found for this week's blog assignment is called Whale Watching. The artist's name is Carmen, but I was unable to find her last name. Carmen is a multimedia artist specializing in pastel paintings. She studied art in Southern California, and later became a commissioned artist for custom homes. Recently she has been busy taking care of her autistic son, and uses her artwork as a way to heal, and free her mind. She currently lives in Hawaii and is inspired by aquatic and island life, and it shows in many of her works.
In this specific piece, she used pastels on sand paper. The image measures W 36" x H 24".
Pastel is a painting medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pigment and a binder. It is said that these paintings are less susceptible to cracking or discoloration as with other mediums, although if not protected the paintings are easily smudged. In this piece she used sfumato as her method to getting the contrast and the values right. Sfumato is a method that dates back to the Renaissance, it mimics the low contrast of photography, which is what makes the painting look so life-like and without lines. This is much of the same concept that we are trying to achieve in our own assignments with the value scale.
I picked this piece because I love the ocean and the wildlife that lives within it. I also chose this piece because we are studying the value scale and how we can make amazing art and create depth by utilizing it well, and I think that this piece demonstrates this idea by mainly using blue and white throughout the entire piece.