How do you use hard pastels in a pastel painting? What are they good for? What are their benefits over soft pastels? What brands are best? What features define the best brands of hard pastels? I've only recently started using hard pastels. When I first tried very soft pastels (Schmincke) I thought they would be all I would, or could ever need in terms of types of pastels - the pigment is so smooth and buttery and the textures you can create are so similar to painting rather t

Ever find you're not sure when to 'stop' with a painting? Do you find you tend to overwork your paintings, and that they're taking forever to finish? Do your paintings lack a focal point because everything is too detailed? I have a terrible habit of working on paintings for too long, overworking them, not knowing when to stop, and not knowing when they're finished. I usually assume that when the whole page or canvas is covered in minute detail and I can't fit any more detail

How do you make a platypus swim? Or how do you make a water animal appear as though it is partly submerged in the water? After fiddling with the background and gel effects (see previous post for work in progress shots), it was finally time to add detail to the platypus in my painting "Afloat". But the question remained - how was I going to make it appear as though the platypus was submerged partly in the water, and swimming along? Reflections and sharp focused 'shiny' highlig

Ever wondered how to layer acrylic gels to get a thick, layered, translucent water-like quality? How do you avoid the previous layer 'coming back up' or 'opening'? What is the difference between the 'heavy' and 'regular' gels? I'm starting a new painting of a platypus to test some new techniques and acrylic mediums, and using for it a photo of a floating platypus which I took at Eungella National Park (1hr drive west of Mackay in QLD, Australia). One characteristic I really w