Elizabeth (alla prima)

A great lively portrait, Frank. Neocolor? I had to look it up, I'm discovering new media everyday. It says it's water-soluble...did you try any of that?

A portrait full of character, Frank - I really like the skin tones...

Thanks Lewis, I have the oil based ones, which you can thin with spirits but haven’t tried that - I stopped using oil paint because of the fumes associated with thinners, so won’t be doing that. Theses wax pastels are very intensely coloured.

Thanks for that Frank. There must be another version where water can be used...that's what I read when I looked up 'Neocolor'. I think I'll give it a miss, you can't buy everything. I've not got on with pastel in the past, so I'll stay with what I have. I can always enjoy the pastel work in the gallery, like yours.

Love the very natural look of this portrait Frank. Are neo-colonial paints oil pastels? Whatever you used they have been most effective.

Thanks Jan and Carole. Carole and Lewis, this is done with Neocolor 1, which is an oil based pastel by Caran D’ache. Neocolor 2 is the newer water soluble version. They are pretty expensive and there’s a knack to using them, I start softly and build up the colour, mixing them to obtain colours that I don’t have. They are easily sharpened with one of the larger sized pencil sharpeners for finer detail.

Yes Frank a well created image