Doc Marten's a Flash From the Past!

Last week I got a big flash from the past! The Glasgow School of Art have digitalised and archived the famous student fashion shows and one of my fellow students sent me the link. Bam! There I was looking at the video of myself, nostalgia for the "good ol days" set in resulting in this, 

Still That Girl.........! 

My Doc's  (these are the patent ones I bought in a fit of midlife crisis)  are like little time machines, taking me back to my art school years. My clothing style was an eclectic collection of 50's dresses, new wave, punk and new romantic, reflecting the millions of facets and contradictions in my personality. The original Doc's took me everywhere and went with everything and so  in essence I am ...  

Still that girl in the Doc's and ballgown running down Sauchiehall Street,

Portfolio flying, head full of sketchbooks, paint and dreams.

Dreams laid to rest, some fulfilled, many still slumber,

Years pass, cares tear at substance but at heart.....

Still that girl in the Doc's and ballgown.

I wanted to achieve a very painterly "impression" of my boots, and here was the start :-

still working on cheaper pastel paper, which hasn't much tooth and doesn't take much pastel, but which I prefer for architecture or still life. 

With a pastel pencil I sketched in the basic shapes and then started blocking in my darks and lights. 

Here we are at the next stage 

The light in my studio wasn't too great, so I switched on overhead light and got some amazing shadows playing on the drawing table where my boots were placed. This played right into my hands, because as I started I hadn't really given much thought to the background. Backgrounds can be daunting, they put me off doing still lifey things; backgrounds should be interesting or then again not in order not to take away the focus from the main elements in the composition, a tricky balancing act. Keeping loose and painterly, I kept on, I think in total it was about 4 hours till the painting was complete. 

Am I happy with the result? If you read my blog you know my criteria for good/bad painting, would I put it on my wall? The answer, yes I would.