Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas is one of my favorite artists. He's known to be one of the organizers of the Impressionist Movement. I could go on about Edgar Degas, but I'll just let you explore him on your own.

The reason for this blog is to just share something I've just recently discovered and I thought is was so cool! For an art class while I was in undergrad we had to recreate a famous art piece using pastels. Everyone went for Van Gogh pieces and I picked Degas because of the portrait like effect his pieces has - and I thought the ballet scenes were cute and girly.

Anyways - what I discovered is that the technique that helped me recreate his work is the technique he's known to use for all his pastel pieces. He would create colors using successive layers and this was how he created the soft, powdery effect in his pieces.

Of course, his work is way better than mine, but I got the gist of the look he was trying to create. Besides having to recreate the piece on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet...the toughest part was trying to create the dark shadows while keeping the "soft" look of the scene. And...the trick was that whole successive layer thing. Instead of applying black directly to the area to create shadows...just use the colors already incorporated in the pictures and keep layering, layering, layering, and layering.

Okay, so below on the left is Edgar Degas' Ballet Class piece and on the right is my version - of course it's not the best, but I tried.