Beautiful Cousins - Suddenly it All Comes Together

I don't really like blaming my tools, because I think it's the last refuge of people who don't actually know what they're doing, but I didn't have a good white pastel, and I finally made the long walk to the art store, and got a couple hard pastels (white and dark brown, for details), and a nice white with just a tiny bit of yellow, to get the colour right.  I also got a few paper stumps to get the blending right, and help with the little details. I don't know if it was the new tools, or they just gave me a little more confidence, but on this layer everything just sort of fell into place.  The colour is much better and the portraits considerably more accurate. I'm going to give it a couple of days, then maybe go back in and touch things up.

Beautiful Cousins - Details

With most of the colours set I can now go in and add detail on top of the larger areas, in order to bring out the image. I think both their hair worked really well, and the clothing is turning out nicely. I'm still not happy with the drafting of their faces or their skin tone. Also, the flowers are now incredibly bright compared to the rest of the piece, so that will have to change. I think the background is a little distracting, and the colours are incongruous with the people. In other words, I'm not very happy with this picture at the moment. But I'm not done yet. We'll just say it's progressing, so check back for the next incarnation, and we'll see if I manage to pull this off. If I do I can say that this stage was all part of the plan.

Beautiful Cousins - Developing Colours

After blocking in the colours I went back in and started to develop the colours towards their real hues, adding more subtlety to the general colours that went in first. I also put in more darks, to give form to the subjects, and because I want the background colours there when I start layering on top (in the hair, for instance).

It's progressing fairly well, though I seem to have switched tactics halfway through, because it's considerably lighter on the right hand side. Partially this is because I'm giving the girl a slightly different skin tone to differentiate the two, but it's supposed to be more subtle than this. That, of course, comes with the eventual layers. I'd rather have things much starker than necessary to begin with than try to add them in the end. Also, I always work from left to right because I'm right handed and don't want to smudge what I've done before, but sometimes this backfires a little if I change things, or leave off before the entire layer is finished, and this is the result. Oh well! There's lots left to do, I'll fix it eventually.

Beautiful Cousins - Block Colour

I'm attempting this drawing in much the same way I would do an oil painting (since it's referred to as 'pastel painting' it seems like as good an idea as any for only a second attempt at pastel portraits), and after the warms and cools I start blocking in colours. At this stage I can stat seeing where everything is going to develop, theoretically. The faces are really going to need some correction, though, because they've gotten kind of off by now. The impreciseness of pastels is something I'm just not quite getting a hold of. Sometimes I can make it work, and sometimes it just confuses me. Which only means I need more practise, of course. Here's hoping I can pull it off on this one.

Beautiful Cousins - Warm and Cool

I'm drawing this pastel very much the way I would do an oil painting, so the first layer has nothing to do with putting in the colours, just with adding some tonal values, showing what is warm and cool, regardless of what colour they'll be in the end. I like this stage because it really sets outs values for the final piece, and tends to make it simpler in the next few stages in terms of shadows and highlights.

Beautiful Cousins

I took this photo of my lovely cousins at my sister's wedding. I decided to do a pastel of it because they're just too gorgeous to resist. Besides, it's only a portrait and a half, so it doesn't seem too complicated. Right? Famous last words. I haven't done a lot of pastels, and I'm always a little unsure of what colour paper I should pick. I choose a subtle blue-grey for this, which I hope will be in keeping with the mood of the photo. So far, I've just done as detailed a sketch as I could, especially since things will get blurry as soon as I start layering on the pastels.