Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun was unique for a woman artist of the late 18th and early 19th century, in producing around 100 en plein air landscapes in pastel. This course will examine Vigee Le Brun's great economic skill in recording the exquisite landscapes of Switzerland and the Alpine regions of Savoy, in the pastel medium. Having studied her pastel technique, we will then make landscape field trips throughout Sydney, in order to apply these skills to our own observations of the natural environment. This course is ideal for anyone who has wanted to learn pastel as both a beginner, or with more experience.

DELIVERY MODE

Face to face

ART MATERIALS

• Faber Castel box 72 soft chalk pastels or numerical equivalent (this amount of chalk pastels are ESSENTIAL for enrolling in this course)
• A variety of A3 coloured papers – buff and blue-grey   
• Kneadable eraser
• 4 paper stumps

COURSE OUTLINE

• Weekly analysis of the pastel landscapes of Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun - from simpler to more complex approaches to pastel landscape.
• Followed by excursions to locations that in some way mirror the vista landscapes to be found in the works of Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Critically select a “palette” of colours that coincide with any image or object to be depicted.  
• Have gained and developed fundamental skills in seeing and recording correct proportion, tone and relative warm and cool values.
• Make use of a variety of coloured papers, employing the paper as a mid-tone and building up successive pastel colours in both thin and more opaque layering.
• Build up a pastel in some instances, in layers from monochrome or dead colour to full colour