Misty by Hannah Merson

wow what a super portrait of a lovely dog. how you get such fine lines on velour? as soon as i draw a fine line it seems to diffuse into the texture of the paper giving a soft blurred effect....great for the background but i cant seem to get sharp details like you have on Misty's face.

I actually thought this was a photograph when I first saw it on the gallery page. I can't believe you have done this in pastel! it's wonderful and what a gorgeous dog. Your skill takes my breath away.

Extraordinary pastel painting!

Simply amazing!!!!

This is absolutely wonderful work ! just amazing.

This is sooo good, I feel I could just reach out and stroke her soft head. I love using pastels but just can't get on with velour. Just paid a visit to your web site, very impressed!

"WOW" what a painting he looks real enough to touch.

Incredible detail, superb, talented work.

Thanks for your kind comments. Steve, the trick with velour paper is to use hard pastels (Faber Castell Polychromos or the like) and use an extremely light touch. If you are just stroking the paper with the hard square corner of the pastel you can get very fine lines. Failing that, once you have a few layers of softer pastel down you can use a pastel pencil. You also need to put down a fair few layers of pastel in order to get the depth. Because velour does seem to 'soak' up the pigment. Hannah x

wow..........you've captured the feel of its fur........lovely gallery.looks like a photo

Congratulations with your win with this one for People's choice. I too paint animals and I think this one is lovely; the out of focus background really sets off the dog. I can't get this sort of detail in pastel either- have only just started using them; I usually use watercolour or acrylic. Glad to see you on the site at last.

Absolutely briliant!! I am amazed by the quality of this work - it is superb!