Just Watching - Pastel on Velour WIP


                           HAPPY THANKSGIVING - HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!   US STYLE
Ah yes, I hear you, you are saying, there sure isn't much that happened here.  And you would be correct.  I had ordered myself a book written by Lesley Harrison, a wonderful wildlife pastelist.  She kind of specializes in horses and wolves and does all other manner of critters.  Anyway why I went ahead and got her book, besides the beautiful pictures, is that she primarily has worked on velour paper for the last 30+ years.  So thought she might have something to tell me that would help me figure this out.  So am taking some time to read it.   Besides it is Thanksgiving, lots of food, fun, football and stuff - so I can be lazy.
You can see that I did start to try to figure out fur with this paper.  I approached it as I did with color pencil, lots of dashes of several fur colors and smoosh, then I tried laying in base colors and then took hard/sharp pastels and went over it with short choppy dashes, I then used a 4H pencil and actually kind of combed through the clump of pastel hairs to see if I could break them up.  Leslie doesn't really address how to do shorter hair so guess I have to work this one out myself. Also, sneaky girl didn't talk about whiskers either.  But I have an idea on the whiskers, just not sure I can use the tool I am thinking about and make it curve as I need to with the whisker hairs - am contemplating the color shaper.
Ok back to trial and error and thanks for stopping by.

Comments

Log Cabin Studio said…
Happy Thanksgiving Nelvia.
I can see that this is going to be beautiful already.
November 27, 2014 at 5:57 PM
hmuxo said…
You're doing a wonderful job on this painting, Nelvia. I'm not sure if you're familiar with my blogger friend Colette...she does a lot of her work using velour paper and her work is amazing....you might want to check her out...her website is
www.petportraitsbycolette.blogspot.ca/
November 28, 2014 at 9:04 AM
Nelvia said…
it is taking me a while to acclimate to the different textures and how they take the pastel. Hoping to get a good lok on this s I go forward.s. Colette,s work is gorgeous.
December 2, 2014 at 2:12 PM
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