A pastel drawing of Anita on coloured paper. Still in progress.

I've done some more work on the shirt, jaw, face and now I will probably leave it more or less as it is. Time to start something else.

I have painted over the sky and clouds background and returned it to the pale blue but with a bit more yellow in it to bring it closer to the yellow in the figure. I have worked into the face some more this time adding a pinker range of skin tones so reducing the yellow.
I have done the same with the hand.

Sky Background

I've put a sky into the background but I'm not liking it. I am going to try to improve the cloud forms and also change the overall colour of the figure or background or both, but I'm thinking I may change it back to a more simple one.

I've done another session on the oil. I've worked in some background and worked up the figure. I had a blue undercoat on the board before painting and after I'd painted the figure I like the undercoat colour, so I've kept a similar colour for the background when I painted it, like a new Zealand sky. I may put in some variation in there. I'm not sure what to do with the lower background apart from making it darker. I'd like to take it out of the studio to an exterior with a sky.
Also, I need to do some rearranging of the jaw. It needs to project more to the left.

Work in Progress

I've started an oil on hardboard here. I have mixed a bit too much linseed oil into the dark paint for the shirt and as can be seen it has run down the board.

New Weblog for drawings and paintings

I am starting a new site/weblog more for the wider world to look at drawings and paintings.
It will be at: www.gallerynewzealand.blogspot.com

Please have a look and let me know what you think.

I have pretty much finished work on the Anita portrait now, as I want to start something new. One thing I have found with pastels is that mixing is limited; you can mix on the paper by smudging which is a bit haphazard. So for this reason very large ranges of colours are produced to allow you to choose the colour you want. I have a range of 24 and I have found that to be far too small, especially in the dark colours. I found myself using black quite a lot in Anita's portrait because there just wasn't another colour dark enough. I have a dark blue which is the next darkest and up from that is a dark brown which is quite a bit lighter.

The other problem is that working on a small scale is tricky because of the bulky-ness of the pastel sticks. Sometimes I want a fine point to draw a line say for around the fine lines of the face. Trying to locate the corner of a thick stick of pastel is haphazard and I don't get enough control over where it is going on the paper.

I am going to read up about these issues for solutions, but I am thinking I may start oil painting soon.