Border Collie dog pastel portrait

This little guy is a freebie lesson from Colin Bradley, an English pastel artist.  He uses strictly pastel pencils and has a variety of subjects and lots of YouTube videos.  Looking at his community where people post their lessons it strikes you that his teaching style/techniques must be very good as there is wonderful, solid work being done under this instruction.  I did one of his cats for the 30 day challenge and was intrigued with his lessons and thought/am thinking about studying with him for a bit.  Anyway, since I have been out of sorts for almost all of March, I decided to give this a try with a friend I met at PMP who was working on the same free video lesson.   Same subject, similar look, but each style is unique and hers turned out just lovely.  Even better, I gained a new artist friend!!

Anyway I started using Stonehenge paper, oh what a difference paper can make, and it was a tremendous mistake so I aborted rather than continue and started again.  I went to an old pad of pastel/charcoal Aqua Bee paper I had, it was more similar to what Colin was using and I went through the lesson, then retried and felt I got lots better results and it went much faster than trying to watch a little video and then do what he did.   But I found I really don't take instruction all that well any more until I found my own rhythm .  I decided to use more colors than he did and also changed up the background using Lachri's bokeh method of circles - used my circle template to try that out  Background is pan pastels and the dog is pencils.
Thanks much for stopping by and taking a look.

Comments

Joan Tavolott said…
He came out beautiful!!! Love his fur!
April 1, 2017 at 9:06 PM
Mellowood Gallery said…
He looks super Nelvia - especially his eyes, of course. I always figure if you only get one thing from any kind of lesson that it was time well spent. This was obviously time well spent. I have missed seeing your posts and hope that you are all better now. Take care of yourself!
April 2, 2017 at 11:59 AM
Helen said…
"I found I really don't take instruction all that well any more until I found my own rhythm." - I love this line. At first it made me chuckle... in agreement of liking to do things my way! Then I kept thinking about the last part. As a teacher, I hope I allow my students the freedom and comfort to "find their own rhythm."
April 2, 2017 at 2:39 PM
Jane said…
You really know how to swing those pastels , what a sweet face and expression of this little dog , wonderfully painted !
April 3, 2017 at 11:29 AM
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