Friday, December 6, 2013

Self-portrait in pastel

On a half-sheet of, I think, gray Ingres paper.  Which is now apparently made by Canson.

Ellen Eagle's book Pastel Painting Atelier appeared at my local library and I found it very inspiring.  Her work (at least in the book) is mostly portraits; her drawing is lovely and her pastel technique both skillful and somehow relaxed.

It was fun to work with pastels again after several years; there's a lot I've forgotten and a lot I never knew.  But I discovered that after working with neutral grays in oils, I really wanted more neutralized colors in pastel, especially low-chroma red-oranges ("brown").  So I tried to make some.  But that's another post.