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Mary Herbert’s work using soft pastels had a great influence on my work and direction of working. As I had been working consistently just using soft pastels generally (no smudging), seeing her work inspired the new techniques that I could go on to use. In the article tagged here it says ‘There’s a kind of poetry to it’, this quote is perfect to describe how my work has been going so far. I’ve been getting used to the angles and ways to even hold the pastel but now moving on it feels more natural.

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After literally going back to the drawing board in her postgraduate diploma, Mary expresses the importance of understanding the simplicity of drawing, in doing so finding the practice that feels the most natural - using the simplest materials available, "as well as focusing on putting the hours into this one practice." This emphasis on materiality is instinctive within Mary's practice and she cherishes the tactile nature of physical mark-making ("It never fails to excite me," she tells us).

Similarly, she found inspiration after her own schooling, going into museum and gallery education, where she continued to learn from making alongside others, including children. "I enjoyed witnessing the freedom of imagination that children have when making," Mary says, explaining that she thinks "non-verbal communication is undervalued in our education system and this excludes many people and forms of learning."

Mary's work has a calmness to it - a tenderness that reveals more the more you look at it. There is a kind of poetry to it. She explains that several themes recur throughout her work - dreams, memories and streams of consciousness - "although the distinction between these three things is pretty negligible and often they're all three at once," she points out. Recently reading texts that explore themes of loss, nature, nostalgia, experience and trauma, as well as "how [these feelings] are held in the body," telling us "most of them come from a personal enquiry into these things, which I find really compelling."

Just as the themes blur, so too do the soft pastels that Mary works with, creating a gentle and liminal feel to the work. "Perhaps this blurred gaze in my images," Mary suggests, "is poking around in the photographic realm... There is also something about energy or charge with the blurred image - it's not smooth and sleek but crackly and fuzzy." In creating a fraught energy to the work, Mary leaves the audience with a hazy, dreamlike sensation. She suggests that this may have come from when she first discussed her dreams during therapy, using the ambiguity and subtlety found in their interpretation to function "as a door into all the stuff we can't control or logically explain, the unknown, and how the activity of dreaming links to memory, particularly in a trans-generational or collective sense."

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Illusion, experience and dream: the soft pastel drawings of Mary Herbert

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The artist creates blurred drawings that have a "crackly and fuzzy" feeling, using this language to explore dreams and memories.

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This piece from Herbert

particularly inspired my practice. Using the pastels to layer and layer and layer is so successful in effects and I have not tried this yet. Alongisde this, the ghostly creatures in the piece go so well with my ongoing theme of the tudors, having some ghosts pictured is a good idea and I will try this.

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Amber Leia Jones’ works on fabrics using the soft pastels. This is another technique I have not tried out, they’d seem to work out more like a powdery pigment and smudge easily which could work well in creating some more whimsical pieces.

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Amber Leia Jones’ illustrations allow you to escape to a more peaceful, softer world

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Inspired by moments of simple magic, the recent Falmouth graduate creates a dreamlike landscape from the small joys of everyday life.

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Leia Jones layers a smudgy base layer with a more crispy outline over the top of the smudges. This again is super effective as it creates this hazy beautiful background, but then if you look closer it turns into a scene with people and different elements to it. Through this brief I could associate doing this with the ghost ideas as mentioned before. By creating a more beautiful background, a stereotypical tudor house or castle, and then layering on top of this a ghost of Anne Boleyn or even applying other techniques I have found such as mixing the pastel with water.

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Paul Verdell uses oil pastels, however I think his was of working can be applied to mine also. The technique of creating this sketchy look for the portraits is super interesting. I’m thinking of looking at doing this technique perhaps for an old portrait of one of the queens. It makes the work feel faster and gives the pieces movement, that when applying the pastels like normal it’s hard to find the movement.

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“I’m not trying to make a statement with my work”: Paul Verdell on how he’s “just here to paint”

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We chat to the American artist about how he gets to know his subjects and how he developed his style through experimentation.

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As well as using the sketchy look Verdell has, I am also taking inspiration from the colour grading he uses. The shadowing by just using one block colour is super effective. Alongside this the mark making is incredible, he uses different directions for the lines to create shape and texture within the piece. Making the work not flat, which is an issue I am finding with the pastels, it’s harder to create depth and shadowing.

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1991 Mine (HIGH RES) by artist William Kentridge

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Kentridges work was such a great influence to my work. Especially the way he uses the charcoals to express movement and emotion. He simply smudges the pastel and it immediately creates this beautiful piece which is so fluid.

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Mazon’s way of simply making the pastels boil a little by creating the same frame over and over again is such a simple but effective way of animating and bringing a piece to life

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MULTIBET88: Link Situs Judi Bola Online Agen SBOBET Resmi Terpercaya | Motion design animation, Animation design, Animation reference

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Multibet88 adalah link situs judi bola online sebagai agen sbobet resmi terpercaya dari indonesia menawarkan odds taruhan yang sangat menguntungkan hari ini.

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Charlotte Ager illustration | Animacion digital, Arte, Arte de animación

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Miguel D’Errico on Behance | Motion design animation, Motion graphics inspiration, Animation design

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Hola! My name is Miguel D’Errico, I’m a freelance animator based in Madrid.

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Gabriel Greenough & Katy Wang create these small depictions of life. Although being short the way they mark make and create the movements in the piece really brings it to life and takes you to where they’re showing you.

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Yosef Phelan

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Laina Deene

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Emma Kelly’s work really creates a character and brings the atmosphere from whatever time period shes working on.

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Tudor Portraits Resource Pack, p. 17

Smartify image discovery app

Bolland, Charlotte, Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, 2018, p. 22 Read entry

Anne Boleyn was the niece of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, the highest-ranking member of the English nobility. She was largely educated at the French court, and served Katherine of Aragon as a maid of honour after her return to England. Unlike her sister Mary, she refused to become the king's mistress and married Henry in secret in 1533, shortly before his marriage to Katherine of Aragon was annulled. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born later that year, but by 1536 the pressure for a male heir after a number of miscarriages led Henry to doubt the legitimacy of their marriage. That same year Anne was executed on a charge of adultery and incest. Anne was described as having a long neck, wide mouth and 'eyes which are black and beautiful'. However, her central role in England's break from the Catholic Church made her a contentious figure and meant that descriptions were often biased against her, such as the report - made many years after her death - that she had six fingers. No contemporary painting of Anne survives, but this portrait is probably a copy of a likeness taken during her brief reign. It is possible that images of her were deliberately destroyed, in the same way that her heraldic devices were removed from the royal palaces after her execution. However, her reputation and interest in her image enjoyed a resurgence during the long reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I.

Bolland, Charlotte; Cooper, Tarnya, The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered, 2014 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 12th September 2014 to 1st March 2015), p. 38

Cannadine, Sir David (Introduction); Cooper, Tarnya; Stewart, Louise; MacGibbon, Rab; Cox, Paul; Peltz, Lucy; Moorhouse, Paul; Broadley, Rosie; Jascot-Gill, Sabina, Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits, 2018 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA, 7 October 2018 -3 February 2019. Bendigo Art Gallery, Australia, 16 March - 14 July 2019.), p. 89 Read entry

All the surviving portraits of Anne were created after her death, usually as part of portrait sets of English monarchs. They probably derive from a lost contemporary portrait and conform to descriptions of Anne's long neck and dark eyes, and depict her wearing a distinctive necklace with a pendant letter 'B'.

Clare Gittings, The National Portrait Gallery Book of Elizabeth I, 2006, p. 2

Cooper, Tarnya, Elizabeth I & Her People, 2013 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 10 October 2013 - 5 January 2014), p. 206

Cooper, Tarnya (introduction) Banville, John (character sketch) Chevalier, Tracy (character sketch) Fellowes, Julian (character sketch) McCall Smith, Alexander (character sketch) Pratchett, Terry (character sketch) Singleton, Sarah (character sketch) Trollope, Joanna (character sketch) Waters, Minette (character sketch), Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People, 2011 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from December 2011 - June 2012), p. 87

Gittings, Clare, The National Portrait Gallery Book of The Tudors, 2006, p. 11

MacLeod, Catharine, Tudor Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery Collection, 1996, p. 17

Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 14

Strong, Roy, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, 1969, p. 5

Various contributors, National Portrait Gallery: A Portrait of Britain, 2014, p. 35 Read entry

Anne Boleyn became Queen of England as the second consort of Henry VIII in 1533. She spent part of her early life abroad, at the court of Margaret of Austria and as a member of the household of Queen Claude of France. When she later joined the court of Henry VIII she was distinguished by her continental education and interest in music and fashion. Her affair with Henry began in 1526 and the couple married in secret in 1533, shortly before the King's marriage to Katherine of Aragon was annulled. Later that year their daughter, the future Elizabeth I, was born. In 1536 Anne was charged with adultery and incest and executed for treason.

This portrait is a late sixteenth-century version based upon a type made of Anne when Queen, and now lost. This portrait may have once belonged to a set of kings and queens that displayed portraits in chronological sequence. Contemporary descriptions suggest Anne was of a dark complexion with a long neck, dark hair and 'black and beautiful' eyes.

Williamson, David, Kings and Queens, 2010, p. 88

Williamson, David, The National Portrait Gallery: History of the Kings and Queens of England, 1998, p. 88

Current affairs

King Henry VIII secretly marries Anne Boleyn in January although his marriage to Catherine of Aragon is not annulled until May. Anne is crowned Queen in June.
Pope Clement VII excommunicates Henry VIII for bigamy.
Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I) is born at Greenwich in September
Thomas Cranmer becomes Archbishop of Canterbury.

Art and science

The German artist Hans Holbein the Younger paints The Ambassadors.

International

Peace treaty between Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria and Suleiman I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire divides Hungary into areas under Hapsburg and Ottoman control.
The Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro executes Atahulpa, emperor of the Incas, and marches on the Inca capital Cuzco (in present-day Peru).

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Tudor Portraits Resource Pack , p. 17 Smartify image discovery app Bolland, Charlotte, Tudor & Jacobean Portraits , 2018, p. 22 Read entry Anne Boleyn was the niece of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, the highest-ranking member of the English nobility.

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Holbein was one of the most accomplished portraitists of the 16th century. He spent two periods of his life in England (1526-8 and 1532-43), portraying the nobility of the Tudor court. Holbein's famous portrait of Henry VIII (London, National Portrait Gallery) dates from the second of these periods.

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Quieten Blakes mark making is so free and expressive.

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Maillard has a more subtle way to animating GIF’s. They consistently seem emotionally charged but softer and more gentle to look at than others. Helped me explore how contrast will create emotion in my work.

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Molly Fairhurst has a playful approach to her GIF’s, there is never a crazy amount of movement in them but the amount of movement that is there is enough to bring them alive. She’s loose, experimental and full of life. Her work encouraged me to embrace fluidity and imperfections.