Right now I have another commission to do portraits of a pair of dogs.
The one in the foreground had just unexpectedly passed away. The one in the background is still around.
The client really wants the foreground dog to stand out, which should be easy since he's a black dog.
I have to watch the background however. I'll be putting grass around the dogs, so I also don't want it to get overwhelmed by that. I'll post pics as I go along.
Finished the Truck!
This is the second to last of the proofs, I had to finish the bottom part a little more and sign the thing. I got it done a couple of days ago. I sure learned a lot from this one! I'm still not too familiar with pastels and what the best method is to work in them.
One thing I learned is I should do the background first! I don't like to do the background first when I do colored pencil, it gets too hard to keep the subject clean for me at least. In this case, it was a real problem adding things around the vehicle after I already had it finished. I think I did alright, but it could have gone smoother.
The other is don't use my finger for blending. I need to make sure that if I do, I have a good callous built up because I pretty much scraped the skin off my finger on the sanded paper. It would have been a bloody mess if I didn't watch what I was doing. It really hurt too.
I haven't found a tool that can blend quite as well as my finger. The things out there lift off the pastel and don't force it into the grain of the paper. Working so small also requires a delicate touch so I can't always blend just using the pastels themselves.
I'm not sure if I like the Wallis sanded paper. It seems to have too much tooth for the above reasons. I did like Pastelbord by Ampersand. It's just enough tooth, but not too much. Problem with that is it's a major pain to frame. I'll have to show a demo on how I framed something else when I used the Pastelbord.
The one in the foreground had just unexpectedly passed away. The one in the background is still around.
The client really wants the foreground dog to stand out, which should be easy since he's a black dog.
I have to watch the background however. I'll be putting grass around the dogs, so I also don't want it to get overwhelmed by that. I'll post pics as I go along.
Finished the Truck!
This is the second to last of the proofs, I had to finish the bottom part a little more and sign the thing. I got it done a couple of days ago. I sure learned a lot from this one! I'm still not too familiar with pastels and what the best method is to work in them.
One thing I learned is I should do the background first! I don't like to do the background first when I do colored pencil, it gets too hard to keep the subject clean for me at least. In this case, it was a real problem adding things around the vehicle after I already had it finished. I think I did alright, but it could have gone smoother.
The other is don't use my finger for blending. I need to make sure that if I do, I have a good callous built up because I pretty much scraped the skin off my finger on the sanded paper. It would have been a bloody mess if I didn't watch what I was doing. It really hurt too.
I haven't found a tool that can blend quite as well as my finger. The things out there lift off the pastel and don't force it into the grain of the paper. Working so small also requires a delicate touch so I can't always blend just using the pastels themselves.
I'm not sure if I like the Wallis sanded paper. It seems to have too much tooth for the above reasons. I did like Pastelbord by Ampersand. It's just enough tooth, but not too much. Problem with that is it's a major pain to frame. I'll have to show a demo on how I framed something else when I used the Pastelbord.
