Pastel of Korinne
 

Here's a new pastel I started a few days ago. Once again, they are driving me insane. I've walked away from this piece several times, popped in a Daniel Greene tape and convinced myself, "hey this stuff is easy", then returned to my suffering. I don't know how much time I've spent on it because I've stepped away so many times.

I'm going to leave the face like this until I finish the background to then judge what colors to finish off the face. I believe I will be adding more ochres as the background will be in shades of ochre with purple and blue accents. she has a great blue light shining in her hair and a purple sweater that I'm waiting to jump into.

This is my first time working off a monitor. I bought a refurbished 21" CRT monitor for under $200 including shipping and it works great. I just had to surround the screen to block out the lighting. It takes getting used to, but the quality is much better than referring to a print. I'll post an update in about a week. Any comments or critiques welcome.

Thanks for looking.

Keep at it Jimmie. You may be struggling, but I think it is only because this is a new medium for you and you are still trying to figure out how they handle, but you obviously know how to find your way. This is coming along beautifully!

What a TREAT! It's going to be so great to follow your progress in the months and years to come (and inspiring, educational, edifying, humbling). The main thing is that you have a very good eye - for values, color, edges... and you have such an appealing touch with the materials....everything else (technical stuff) will sort itself out.

Thank you SO MUCH for posting your unfinished work.

David

Jimmie this doesn't read like you are suffering your way through it.

I'm looking forward to the results of your pain though. I like this one as it is, something about energy. ;)

Jean

Jimmie, you are off to a luscious beginning, great surface quality, very painterly!

PS ( my "Enter key" finger is way too fast)

Why do you want to change the coor of the background you already have? You have already made excellent color and temperature decisions based on the cooler gray background - to change to a warm temperature background now will cause you to have to do a lot of repainting in the skin tones.

You make it look easy....
 

....the mark of a true professional. I will be looking forward to seeing the finished piece.

Thanks all.

Before my following answers sound dumb and naive, that's because they probably are. The gray that's there now is the Belgium Mist from Wallis, and I never gave thought to having a gray background for this piece. Now I've never been good at color, but I thought the ochre background would work well with the purple sweater.

The verticle column touching her face will be darker than the other planes and have reflected cool colors that will be similar to the reflected colors on the back of her hair.

I wish I had my sketch to post to demonstrate what I planned. It looked good to me, but like I said before, I've always been weak with color. I have it at work, so I'll try posting it tomorrow night or Tuesday morning. Thanks for the advice.

Thanks again to everyone.

sketch
 

OK, here's the sketch I made before I started my last pastel. It's very basic, it's intention was more composition and color block-ins. I thought the colors looked ok to me; they're much stronger and saturated than the reference, and I figured they'd look better in the finished product.

Don't know how much info can be gathered from the sketch, but any opinions are welcome. Thanks.

Ahhh Jimmie if I could only suffer as you! :)

I am with Chris on the background stuff, and everyone else on the kudo's.

B