Summer's Day, Finished

Finished today, put the detail of the shirts in, and played around with the contrasts. I would have liked to achieved brighter highlights in the hair, but unable to get the pastel to build up any further. I guess tooth overload!

Summer's Day, Work in Progress

Haven't really had any time to do anything to this since the weekend. Spent some time today starting to consider the textures on the hats. I've taken the opposite approach to my previous pastels, using soft pastels fairly early on, then working finer detail with conte pastels(hard). This approach has been fairly successful, however struggling to achieve the highlights on the blonde hair.

My first pastel portrait commission

This is my first commissioned pastel portrait. Just had a lovely email from the boys' mum, she's really pleased with it. They were great to draw so expressive, doing so much with their hands!

Monkey business

I've been playing.....

Love the shapes of this, definitely worth a ponder.....

Summer's day

Day 1
This is a pastel I started this weekend, It's my son Spencer, with two friends from school. I took this at the school's sport's day, it was a scorching day, so the kids all have very rosy cheeks and are decked out in their sun hats! I was working on this at the craft fair I had on this Saturday, mainly to stop me getting bored being sat on a stall, and obviously to look like an artist! I've lots more to do, the hats have some great details, and there are some lovely shady bits.

Lioness wip, finished

Day 3

I've really had to get on today, so haven't taken any more wip. I've added the background so I could see where I needed to add tone and colour. I'm pretty happy, I could probably spend another day on this, but can't, so here it is.

Day 2 Lioness Wip

Day 2, stage 4
I'm hoping the reason I can't see a difference is that I had to take this photo under my day light lamp! I decided to work on this upside down a bit. Its a great way to spot errors, your eyes can't assume things.
I'm fairly pleased, if a little slow to progress. Tomorrow I'm going to work on the background, then decide how much more colour and tone to give the lioness.









Day 2, stage 3
I've decided to spray this with a layer of fixative. I've used some softer pastels to get the softness of the fur, but now want to work some finer detail in. I'm using conte pastels, which are hard, to achieve some finer detail. I've stopped thinking I'm finishing this today, as I haven't even considered the background yet.





Day 2, stage 2

Still getting to grips with the bone structure and muscles. Have started to consider the fur, used a stump (pastel tool) to get a feeling of the direction of the fur. Now I'm really thinking this isn't going to be finished today!







Day 2, Stage 1.
Well, mixed feelings today, I wanted to finish this today, but I am a long way off that. However its going okay, so will crack on. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so won't rush it. I've put some colour and light in her eyes, and continued to add form.