Bodrum bits and pieces

Painting with pastels is a joy, that is until you accidentally drop your pastel box on the concrete floor and watch them smash to million pieces!

left-overs

Naturally, I started swearing in my mother tongue and feeling quite upset :) Well, after calming down, I tried to see the upside of this event. I had all this tiny pieces, assorted in colour families.... hmmmm why not try to put them back together I say. I heard that if you grind up the bits and add water you can reclaim the pastels.

Collect all the bits (I sorted them in colour families)

Grind it up well

Add water with spray bottle and mix it well with apainting knife. I made couple of lumps and gradually added some white pastel to get different tints.

Shaped them in rough rectangles and left them to dry for a day. The quality is so so, a bit to rough and "chalky" for my taste. I really enjoy the smoothness of Terry Ludwig or Senellier pastels compared to these homemade ones. One interesting byproduct of grinding up different pastel colours together is that you get a slight confetti effect, meaning colour in not 100% uniform. I kinda like that, it makes the painting process a bit surprising. 

I ended using them in this study painted from acouple of different photos taken during my Turkey vacation. 

scuba diving spot near Bodrum