Michael Norman PS

Michael usually works from sketches made on site. He often takes a Unison pastels colour chart, which he uses to annotate my sketches with colour references. He also use a digital camera for back-up information, and for detail that he may have omitted to record at the time. Michael paints in soft pastel on either pumice paper, solid-core mountboard, to which he applies a coloured pumice surface, Sennelier pastel card or Canson paper. He quite often makes an underpainting in pastel by blocking in all the main areas of colour and then dragging the applied pastel down with the side of my hand over the whole picture area. This creates a ghostlike image, and also has the effect of unifying the colour. He sometimes draws out my subject in charcoal. Michael usually has three or four paintings in progress at any one time.