Using mistakes to make something creative

"Lauren Christoff"  pastel on sanded paper 10 x 25"

There are many ways to approach creating a figurative drawing in pastel.  I think that my beginning students get frustrated because there really is no solid process or science to it, at least not in our world.  I do a lot of changing up on my own processes depending on the drawing. In fact most of my best works happen because I made a mistake or something went wrong and I had to approach my drawing from a different angle.  In this case I did not have a perfect photo to work from.  Its my own fault.  I am actually quite used to fuzzy photos.  Most of my portrait clients in the past have sent me horrible photos of things like the back of someone's head, or perhaps of an animal after it's passing. By this I mean that the photo was of a, uhhhh... deceased pet after the deceasing happened. In this case however, the poor photo choice was totally on me.

I wanted to do something fun of my niece Lauren.  When she came down from Ohio a year ago for a visit we spent an hour doing a detailed photo shoot.  We varied the outfits, location, lighting and moods.  Once she went home I searched for the memory card of her photo shoot.  It was GONE!  I blame my dog for eating it.  He eats everything.

So, I did what any good Auntie Em would do, I stalked her on facebook.  I never found one photo that excited me so I took my best bet and used a photo of Lauren and her Mom, my sister in law Sandi. Of course I asked permission first.  Since I know Lauren's face well I took liberties from the photo.  I dont do that with clients usually unless they specifically ask me to reduce a chin or two.

From this not so clear photo I did a thumbnail. Of course being the lazy cheat that I am, I did it on photoshop.  I flipped it, cropped it and reduced it to black and white.  I do a majority of my work from a black and white reference photo by the way.  After removing the color I could see the values more clearly so I altered the contrast and brightness to soften the harsher lights and bring out some details in the shadowed areas.  In cave man days we had to do all of this by hand.

As I mentioned before, there are so many processes to creating a pastel drawing. My advice is to mix it up and have fun. I often alter my steps and such to avoid burn out.  Sometimes I do a wet underdrawing, sometimes its dry.  Sometimes I tint the paper myself and sometimes I use pre tinted paper. In this particular drawing I first did a black and white value drawing using off white Uart sanded paper, keeping the layers thin.

When I was done with the values I added a thin layer of green.  The purpose of the green is that since it is the complementary color of most model's skin, it creates a beautiful glowing effect once I draw over it with other redish layers.  Greens and Reds make grays and browns once mixed or glazed together. The darker the skin of my model, the darker the values, but I still use green.  This is called "Verdaccio" and is most often used with oil painting.  I cant take credit for it. It was developed by early Renaissance artists.  If you take a close look at the Sistine Chapel, you will see part of the greenish gray under paintings used in the architectural elements. Just google "Michelangelo".

After the Green layer I add warm yellows to the highlights and cool tones such as blue to the shadows.  I soften some edges and sharpen others. The reason why I do this is because I want part of the face to stick out towards the viewer, and other parts to move to the back. When studying the element of "space" an artist learns that to make something look more 3 d, you make the shadows and distance areas softer, cooler and less defined to cause it to recede. You use texture, warm tones, and sharp edges to make that part of the object to advance.

Then, After establishing value, space, edge and spacial composition as stated above, I  take my time adding topical colors and such.  Topical colors is just a fancy artsypants way of saying "normal color"  After I get the hues (colors)  and values (shadows and bright spots) where I like them I go over it one last time and add some flowing texture with my pencils. These lines gives it life and makes it move and breathe. Its around this time that I will start to refer to the color photo. I usually start adding the odd reflective colors now too.

Most of this drawing was done using Stabilo pastel pencil.  Towards the end I used Rembrandt and Nupastel pastels to add her hair and background. If I finger blend I always top it with pencil texture since finger blending can turn layers of pastel into mud.

Well, thats about it.  I got the drawing done in time for her folks to display it at her graduation party.  One of these days I will find her photo shoot and do the full body drawing with all of the fancy swirls and gilding that I originally had in mind.  Unless of course my Pit/lab Albusdumbledog ate it.  Then I dont want the memory card back!