Naughty Henry heron pastel portrait

                                                                   Naughty Henry
                                                                        14"x11"
                                                                         Pastel
Henry is the prime suspect in Carla's mystery whodunit of "Who Ate the Goldfish in the Garden".   Henry was seen in her yard for several days and does seem to have a self satisfied look gleaming in his eye.  He was grateful enough, however, that he stayed posed and allowed her to get quite close to take pictures.

I started out planning to use colored pencils on the DurALar.  Quickly it didn't work, I just couldn't get the grays dark enough before the tooth of the paper is filled.  This is a mylar paper, synthetic and transparent.  While you can put about 4-5 layers of pencil on each side it does fill up fast.  So I switched from CP to pan pastels.  Due to the sheer manner of application this worked pretty well and I mostly used only one side.  The unusual thing about using the DurALar is that it is matte but you can see through it, I put several different paper color options behind it and settled on this one, a bright blue.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.


Comments

Helen said…
I always love the story behind the picture!
June 8, 2017 at 5:29 PM
Joan Tavolott said…
The feathers look so soft this way. Love it!!!
June 8, 2017 at 9:36 PM
Mellowood Gallery said…
He looks all puffed up as if he is cold - or maybe he is ashamed of getting the fish. Nice job, Nelvia
June 9, 2017 at 11:10 AM
Jane said…
Fabulous work on the feathers and I love that peeping ( and guilty ? ) eye !
June 10, 2017 at 4:04 AM
hmuxo said…
Beautiful work on the feathers Nelvia!!!
June 11, 2017 at 6:58 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bold woman's portrait

Image
Bold Ok, for today's portrait I went out of the box and decided to try a different look and approach. This is on watercolor paper, I applied a layer of paper collate over it (you can see that some of it started lifting - so got to use more medium to glue it next time)  Anyway then I tried to leave part of that under collage showing, even in the face.  Went back in and applied several more light lawyers of transparent and opaque paint and then put in the hair using my dagger bus.   Gosh that brush makes hair so much easier While this might not the best example what are your thoughts to taking portraits this more dynamic direction? Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.
Read more

Her Highness mixed media woman portrait

Image
Her Highness   I just absolutely loved the expression on this lady and knew I wanted to try to capture her elegance and serenity.  I knew that I didn't want an exact portrait and decided to try another mixed media piece.    I added blobs of paint and used my large scraper to make the areas of color.  Just put paint on a piece of watercolor paper.  Then I inscribed and mixed the colors together with the end of my brush and got all the wavy lines (in real life they actually stand up so there is a 3D effect to the background).  Where I thought I wanted the face I really scraped most of the paint off, and ended up with color blotches and tones, and if you look in the forehead you can sort of see the design that was left.  I thought it would add some variance to the skin tones. I also want to keep her very soft so I tried to stay in the pastel tones, even with the lips.   Once I got shadows and lights added in, and went over it with some skin tone and more blue colors I let
Read more

In The Garden acrylic painting Redo

Image
In The Garden Original painting Well, thankfully I have some folks who tell me what they think.  I value their objective opinions very much and appreciate that they feel strongly enough to tell me when they feel something is off.  In the original painting no one liked the addition of the yellow flower, and felt it pulled the eye and overshadowed the focal point.   Well, I sat on it a bit and starting playing with how I could work it back into the composition.  I wanted the third flower, but I couldn't just really dull down the yellow.  As you an see I ended up making it darker in shadows and then burying it into the foliage.  I like it better because it now looks, to me, like it is part of the picture instead of just being put on in the corner.  Moral of the story, fix it first because it is hard to come in and match colors later. What do you think of the changes - for better or worse? Thanks much for stopping by and taking a look.
Read more