This is a pastel on Wallis, about 12 x 18 inches. Kasey is my stepdaughter who sat reading a book while I did the portrait in about 2.5 hours today.
After trying a portrait from life in my oil painting class, I was anxious to see how I would do with the pastels (my usual medium). I feel o.k. about this as a first attempt (lots of oopses), but would love some suggestions for improvement.
Here is the process I used: For the first 20-30 minutes all I did was measure. I used my see thru ruler to get relative measurements of the height and width of the face, neck, torso, shoulders. Then I measured the relative placements of the eyes, nose tip, mouth, chin and hairline. Next I rough sketched the portrait in charcoal and made refinements. I did not put in any shading, I just drew outlines of the shaded areas so that I would have the shapes of the light, middle and dark tones down accurately. That sounds a lot easier than it was, and I had to correct a lot of errors as I went. Finally, nearly an hour into the process, I started applying color. Darks first, then middle tones then lights. I moved around the portrait and worked on all parts.
This would have been a real mess if I hadn't been using a sanded support with a really good tooth. I found I was not very good at figuring the right colors straight away.
