Pastel portrait painting of a young mother and her son at the ocean.

Pastel painting 10 inches x 13 inches   SOLD

My collector has given his wife this portrait painting for Christmas, so I can finally post it without spoiling the surprise! He called me on Christmas day to tell me how much she liked it…and how she cried when she opened the package. What a joy to make someone happy by making the art I love to make. Another part of my life that I am very thankful for.

I hope you all have a wonderful new year!

This artwork was created with:
Paper: Kitty Wallis White Pastel Paper
Medium: Rembrandt Pastels and Sennelier Pastels

Pastel portrait of a young football player

Pastel painting 12 inches x 18 inches

All male testosterone in figure drawing session last week! This strapping young football player posed in his uniform for the class. In this pastel portrait I decided to take a step back from all the color I usually use, and work only in black and white pastel.

Maybe I was overloaded from the 5 hours it took me to completely revamp my pastel set-up in my studio. I’ve known for a long time that I really needed to take off the papers on each stick and arrange all of them by color and value–not by brand, the way I had for years. Everything I’ve read says that this is the best way to work. I finally bucked up and did it. I broke each pastel in half and put one half with the code number on it in a storage box. Now, when I run out of a color, I can go to my stock, get a new stick, and know which pastel to reorder at Dick Blick’s.  I usually use NuPastels and a variety of soft pastels. Here’s what my new set-up looks like:

This artwork was created with:
Paper: Canson Mi-Tients Steel Gray Paper
Medium: Black and White Rembrandt Pastels

Pastel painting 16 inches x 11 inches     SOLD

I just gave this pastel commission to my client and he loved it. His father was 47 when he was born and he’d never had a photo of the two of them together. When he was a boy in the 1940s, his dad, a train engineer, often took him to the rail yards to look at the mamouth machines. He provided me with 5 photos of himself when he was young, his only photo of his father (lounging on a sofa), a huge book of train photos and 2 railroad engineer caps. It was a daunting task to take all of that information and try to make it into a cohesive composition.

I felt like I was really creating an historical illustration, as opposed to a fine art pastel portrait. But I enjoyed the challenge and am looking forward to creating another commissioned painting of his wife and her father!

Pastel portrait of young man in sun glasses at the shore.

Pastel painting 8 inches x 11 inches   SOLD

When we were “Up North” a while ago, I was able to coral my handsome young nephew for a figure drawing session on the beach. He sat so patiently, staring out at the crystal blue water, hardly moving a bit. Now that is my ideal of the perfect model for a pastel portrait!

Pastel portrait painting of a young man leaning on his knee

Pastel painting 11 inches x17 inches   $300

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

In our pastel figure drawing session last week we had a handsome, strapping young model. I’m sure he thought posing was going to be a cinch. I think it proved to be a little more difficult than he thought, but he did an admirable job. I really enjoyed painting his pastel portrait, and liked the challenge of working with the complimentary blues and oranges.