Pastel Portrait Class

 

This is my beginning effort from Deb Richardson's pastel portrait class that I am taking through Cordovan Art School at Jerry's Artarama in Austin. Deb has shown us how to do a "landmark grid" to transfer a picture to the pastel board (this is an 8 x 10 light grey ampersand board worked with Rembrandt soft pastels) - with this landmark grid you don't do a conventional 1" x 1" grid but you make note of the important features & their location - eyes, nose, nostrils, brow, lips,  etc. You can see the soft pastel pencil lines of the grid in the gray background to the right of the face. These will be completely covered and invisible when the portrait is completed. This style of using a grid is much more practical and gives you the information that you need to transfer the picture- the picture is then drawn in grid by grid. Then, after the picture is transferred, we work the piece UPSIDE DOWN! This disconnects your brain from seeing the entire portrait and helps you focus on the individual grid pieces so that you can get the highlights and darks laid in correctly. It also helps you actually  "see" all  of the color that is in the flesh - not just crayola crayon flesh tone but oranges, pinks, blues, browns, purples, greens. It is amazing the different colors that you use to render the flesh  tones correctly. We also use pieces of white paper to section off areas of the reference picture to work on  the portrait grid by grid - again separating the areas into smaller pieces helps to see and render what is there, not what you  imagine that the face should look like. This has  been a great class, I have learned a lot already. Deb is a fantastic teacher and artist, a good communicator, and makes the class fun too! She brings out the best in each student and helps timid artists blossom.