Pastel portrait painting of a young woman.

Pastel painting 12 inches x 18 inches

I know I am finally back in “art” mode when I regularly attend my portrait drawing sessions. Going every Monday (especially now that I am not working at my ad agency) gives a structure to my art time. I vow that I am going to start going every Saturday morning to my nude figure drawing class as well. Even though most of my gallery work is focused more on landscapes, there is soooo much to learn from drawing the human figure and trying to capture a good likeness of a person. There simply is no faking it. You have to DRAW WHAT YOU SEE, not WHAT YOU KNOW. It really forces you to use your vision and art skills at the highest possible level.

I was lucky to get an interesting profile view of the model for this pastel portrait. It made me realize that almost all of my previous attempts had been “straight on”. Time to mix it up!

This artwork was created with
Paper: Canson Mi-Tients Burgundy Paper
Medium: Rembrandt Pastels and Sennelier Pastels

Watercolor portrait of a young woman with a pink rose in her hair

Watercolor portrait of a young woman with a pink rose in her hair.

Watercolor portrait paintings   12 inches x 18 inches   and 11 x 17 inches

I was looking forward to our portrait painting class this week, but feeling that I wanted to shake it up a bit. I almost always work in pastel, a medium where I feel very comfortable and reasonably sure that I can capture a likeness. I wanted to push myself a bit and do something different. I decided to pull out the watercolors (all packed nicely in my new carrying case!) To really ramp it up, I decided to work on Yupo paper, a plastic substrate that doesn’t absorb the paint, but allows it to pool on the surface. I worked on two watercolor portraits at the same time so one could dry while I painted on the other. I wasn’t trying to capture an exact likeness. I just wanted to play with the medium. Its fun to loosen up every once in a while!

This artwork was created with:
Paper: Yupo
Medium: Da Vinci Watercolors

Pastel portrait painting of a young woman reading.

Pastel painting   9 inches x 12 inches

Loosen up! I wanted to do a quick figure painting, a sketch really, playing around with color and expressive strokes. Every once in a while it helps to play with your medium, in this case pastel, and get away from your usual approach. I liked the diagonal composition and using complimentary colors, red and green, which make the piece really zing! I’m not sure that my daughter Manda would recognize herself, but I wasn’t really looking to create and exact pastel portrait. Just having fun!

I’m currently working on a pastel portrait of mother and child for one of my art clients. This one will be a much tighter rendition. I’ll post it soon…

This artwork was created with:
Paper: Leaf Green Dark Art Spectrum Pastel Paper
Medium: Rembrandt Pastels and Sennelier Pastels

Pastel portrait painting of a young blond teenager.

Pastel painting 11 inches x 17 inches

We had a lovely young teenage girl pose for us last week at our figure drawing session. She is a neighbor of a wonderful pastel artist and teacher in our group, Janet Kohler. (some of Janet’s work can be seen here.) Sarah was dressed in purple and we set her up against a purple backdrop. Wow! With her blond hair and pale skin tones, the color just popped in my pastel portrait of her!

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

Pastel portrait painting of a young girl reading.

Pastel painting 11 inches x 17 inches

We’ve been painting alot of children and teenagers in our figure drawing sessions this summer. The kids are out of school and its a perfect time to capture them in pastel portraits.  This young lady is actually a daughter of one of our painters. She sat quietly and read for over 2 hours and barely moved! It was interesting to try and capture her likeness without seeing her eyes. Usually eyes are such a large (and difficult!) part of capturing someone’s likeness…

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 young woman

Pastel painting 12 inches x 17 inches

No figure drawing session today because of the holiday, but last week I painted this pastel portrait of our lovely model. Thought I had her captured for a moment, but then I seemed to lose it a bit… Funny thing with portraits, a good likeness is VERY important if you are working to please a patron. But sometimes it is just fun to play with the figure and see how it comes out. After all, if the viewer doesn’t actually know the model, they cannot be disappointed if the portrait isn’t an exact replica of the person. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Pastel portrait painting of a a young woman

Pastel painting 11 inches x 17 inches

I did this pastel portrait of a pretty young woman at one of our figure drawing sessions about a month ago. I missed last week so am excited to get back this week. Practice, practice, practice…

Pastel portrait of a young woman in a straw hat.

Pastel painting 11 inches x 14 inches

We had the most wonderful model at our figure drawing session last week! She was a pretty young thing with a fresh, sweet look. She had a beautiful voice and sprinkled french phrases throughout her conversation.  She reminded me of a 17th century french lass and I wanted to capture that effect in my pastel portrait of her.

This piece was done on the pebbly Richeson paper that I have been struggling with lately. I was trying for a very classical look and I think the paper actually helped me in my quest!

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…

Its been quite a while since I’ve posted any artworks from my pastel figure drawing sessions. During plein air season, I tend to spend all of my time outdoors, chasing the light. But when the weather doesn’t allow outdoor painting, I’m happy to go to class and work on the human figure. We had a wonderful young female model a couple of weeks ago.  In my pastel portrait of her, I wanted to capture her relaxed position, her beauty, and also a bit of the melancholy that seemed to surround her.

This pastel painting was done on Art Spectrum Terra Cotta paper, a perfect foil for the complimentary blues in her clothing…

Colorful pastel portrait of a young women in the Fauvist style.

Pastel painting 10 inches x 13 inches

A couple of weeks ago the Great Lakes Pastel Society held our first convention.  I was honored to be a presenter speaking about the business of being an artist. We had some high caliber artists who did demonstrations and workshops. Brenda Mattson held a landscape drawing workshop and brought along some new Richeson products for us to use. I decided to take advantage of the reduced convention price and purchased their new 12o hard pastel set. Its supposed to be light fast and has a lot more colors than NuPastel offers. God knows I don’t need more pastels…but I couldn’t help myself.

I brought the set to our figure drawing session last week and went crazy with color. Our model, Angela, is a beautiful young woman with classical features but I wanted to push the envelope with my pastel portrait of her. After I got home, it seemed to me that I might have been channeling the Fauvists of the early 1900s…