Still Life with Fruit and Vase - Tempera and Soft Chalk Pastel

Thursday Adults

Every now and again I like to throw a still-life project into the curriculum. It provides for solid academic art training and skill building, and can be rendered in any medium or style, so the options are endless.

My adults had not done too many projects with soft chalk pastels yet, so I thought I'd start there. To make this one extra luscious and exciting with a different twist, I decided I'd add an extra element: tempera paint underpainting.

Painting our background and our still-life elements in a flat coat of tempera paint first provides our fruit with a richness and a deep intensity. This base, over which the chalk is layered, shines through the final chalk, giving a far more vibrant result than you would otherwise get with white paper.

A chalk underpainting also takes a little pressure off of working with chalk. I find chalk is a really challenging and messy medium. Without a vibrant underpainting, students tend to overwork and over blend their chalk in order to get the bold results they are going for. The problem here is that when chalk is overworked, it actually loses it's intensity and character, becoming diluted, muddy and flat.

With an underpainting, the main color of our fruit is already in place, so we can focus on using our chalk to add the strong accents, highlights, shadows and texture, without the mess and stress of covering the entire paper with a layer of chalk.

I rarely use tempera paint in the art room. I find it too chalky, streaky and transparent for most of our purposes. However, it's perfect for this application, since it's just an undercoat, and the chalkiness actually serves to 'grip' and 'hold' the layers of chalk.

 Process:

Students sketched out an original still-life in pencil using a combination of reference photos.

Using basic school tempera paint, students painted the main color (or local color) of each fruit, element, and their background and table. Color was applied flatly, without toning. 

Next, students began shading their composition with chalk, focussing on the changes in value and creating soft transitions between these in order to render a realistic sense of form. 

Fingers were uses to smudge and blend. Students were encouraged not to over blend. Colors were layered over top one another, edges blended out with fingers, and shadows and highlights added. 

Background walls were done is several colors, using a scrumbling method, for that textured, vintage look. To scrumble, use the flat side of the chalk and loosely and quickly 'scrumble' the chalk in different areas on the wall. Repeat with 1-2 more colors (near each other on the color wheel to avoid browns), and then softly blend edges together with a finger, or scrumble over top the edges with a white chalk for a brighter, softer blend.

Chalk pencils were used to add details and to refine contours. 

Final pieces were sprayed with fixative.

My adults were pleasantly surprised by their results. It sparked a new-found love, respect and curiosity for the humble chalk medium. 

This was a stress-free and quick project with excellent results that was completed in one session (3 hours).