Pastel Portrait of Christa - 2

Christa's second pastel portrait is basically done. I might have a few tweaks here an there but otherwise what you see is what you get: This piece was created with soft pastels on 12" x 16" Canson MiTientes pastel paper.

In the first portrait I started by trying to give Christa's face a more interesting angle. It's just one of my stylistic things... and it seldom works the way I intend, but as you know I don't give up on things very easily. It didn't work with, however. So this time I stuck with the straight semi-profile approach as you can see in the drawing - which is just a basic charcoal sketch. I tried to avoid getting too detailed with the features at this early stage since it can interfere with the pastel painting.

The paper still has a bit of grain for my taste. It is a compromise situation: the more grain the paper has, the more layers you can paint, and the greater depth that is achieved. I still may go back to Bristol board soon, though.

The problem with grain is shown more clearly in the closeup detail from this painting...

Pastel Portrait - Christa

Pastel on Mi-Tientes paper, 12" x 16" - this paper has a lot of "grain" to it but far less than the Strathmore Charcoal paper used in the previous portrait.

Frankly, I'm not happy with it. However, I DO consider this to be a learning experience. We'll just keep working on it. BTW, the original had a lot more color range and detail than the photograph. This is one of the frustrations of posting images.

The things I like: Nose, which in the original really pops out as photorealistic 3-d. Overall color, which gives a lot of depth and mood to the work. Things I don't like: Lips, don't stand out enough and not dimensional enough. Hair, too flat and lost on the right side of the painting because it's so dark.

The reference photo wasn't that great, but I don't want to make excuses. My intent is never to copy photos but to use them as a platform for creative expression.

Pastel Portrait of Mayor

  A pastel portrait of the mayor of the City of Tillamook, Oregon - The honorable Bob McPheeters.

  This art work is soft pastels on 12x18 charcoal paper. It's a bit too much surface texture for my taste but I wanted to try it. On the other hand, lots of surface texture means a more painterly and less photographic image - which might be a good thing. It was finished over a course of several days, working here and there in multiple layers.

  I didn't have a good picture to work with and I have only met with the mayor on two occassions so that made this work extremely challenging. For a reference, you can see what I had to work with HERE.

  Below you will see a more detailed view of the mayor's head in this pastel portrait work-up, done for an upcoming exhibit.



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