Pastel portrait painting of a young woman from the waist up.

Pastel painting 11 inches x 17 inches

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the name of our figure drawing model a couple of weeks ago. But she was so professional and had mentioned that she had done quite a bit of modeling throughout the county, so I titled this pastel portrait Pro!

This artwork was created with
Paper: Canson Mi-Tients Burgundy Paper
Medium: Rembrandt Pastels and Sennelier 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 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 of a seated man.

Pastel painting 11 inches x 17 inches

Carmen has been kind enough to pose for us quite a few times at our figure drawing sessions. I always feel that my pastel portraits make him look stern but he really is a wonderfully warm man who is always a pleasure to talk to.  Click here to see a previous pastel painting I did of Carmen last year.

Pastel portrait of a beautiful asian woman in a kimono.

Pastel painting 10 inches x 15 inches

I painted this pastel portrait a couple of weeks ago at our figure drawing session. The model was quite accomplished and brought her kimono along to give her pose a bit of atmosphere and mystery. I usually “pack” my pastel paper by putting layers of newspaper underneath. It tends to give the pastel painting a softer feel. I forgot my newspaper this time and had only corrugated cardboard to use as a base.You can see how the texture of the striated cardboard showed up as a pattern in the drawing. At first I was horrified, but then I started liking it…go figure…