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 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 a young girl in profile.

Pastel painting 12 inches x 14 inches

Alea is a beautiful young girl who has posed for us a few times at our figure drawing sessions, sometimes with her mother and sometimes alone. She does a great job of holding the pose, especially for someone so young.  All the portrait artists in class adore her…

Pastel portrait painting of a mother and young daughter.

Pastel painting 10 inches x 13 inches

What fun! We had a mother and her daughter for our models for 2 figure drawing sessions in a row a while ago. It was a real challenge to paint 2 people together so we were all happy to have the extended time to work.

I painted this pastel portrait on Barbara Mattson pastel paper which is an extremely “pebbley” sanded surface. I’m tryin hard to find the right subject for this paper but it may not be right for my style of application…