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"Pastel Portrait" Work in progress
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Message
Posted
When using pastels, I usually work light to dark. Otherwise the dark is likely to be smudged into the wrong place. I make sure the pupils of the eyes don’t smudge, by using black coloured pencil. Alternatively you can work from top left to bottom right (if you are right handed).
For initial guidelines I use chalk, which can easily be rubbed out or blended in.
Posted
Just an observation here, but why are we all so concerned about rubbing out our working lines, they’re part of the drawing process and should be left on view. It’s madness to start rubbing them out!
It demonstrates how we developed our drawing and is an integral part of the finished work.
Image how boring Rembrandt’s wonderful figure and portrait sketches would look without his working lines!
Posted
I remember Arnold Lowrey advising against using pencil as the basis for pastel, because "graphite is a lubricant", and pastel won't adhere to it properly. There are caveats to be employed there, but even so I think he was right about avoiding pencil under pastel; I very rarely work in pastel, but I'd go in without pencil all the same; pastel on pastel, on watercolour, on acrylic applied as watercolour, on conté crayon, on ink, but not pencil.
As for lines - keep them! Look at Rupert Cordeux's watercolours, if you want a living painter - he doesn't rub out his pencil lines, they're part of the building blocks of his watercolours, mainstays of the structure. Of course, most of us have removed a stray line now and then with a touch of the putty rubber or art rubber, but apart from anything else, so often traces are left - which makes it look as if you wanted to hide the fact that you sketched something out in pencil first before going in with stronger line: as if that was somehow "wrong", or a confession of amateurism. Be proud of your pencil lines as you should be proud of your own lines and wrinkles! Trying to hide them ain't fooling no one......
Posted
To put my pennyworth in....I often think it adds to a water colour painting if you keep in the pencil marks but it depends on the " style" of the piece of work. Re a pastel, to me pencil is " alien". By all means draw with a pastel pencil, it can then be incorporated into the work. Use a colour which is " sympathetic". If you work with soft pastels ( Unison, Sennellier etc) the result is more a " painting" than a sketch or drawing, the pastel is applied more thickly, usually you won't see initial guide lines. When I use pastels my approach is the same as with an oil or acrylic. I don't put in a preliminary drawing, just shapes. But we are all different....Angela, try using a pastel instead of a graphite pencil.
Posted
To put my pennyworth in....I often think it adds to a water colour painting if you keep in the pencil marks but it depends on the " style" of the piece of work. Re a pastel, to me pencil is " alien". By all means draw with a pastel pencil, it can then be incorporated into the work. Use a colour which is " sympathetic". If you work with soft pastels ( Unison, Sennellier etc) the result is more a " painting" than a sketch or drawing, the pastel is applied more thickly, usually you won't see initial guide lines. When I use pastels my approach is the same as with an oil or acrylic. I don't put in a preliminary drawing, just shapes. But we are all different....Angela, try using a pastel instead of a graphite pencil.