Pastel is such an exciting media for me, the purity of the pigment makes such luminosity available, and it's immediate and simple, pick up the stick and start!
This demo contains all of my favorite techniques. I don't always use them all on one work, but Chinook, a Canadian Lynx who lives at Animal Ark in Reno NV, has a long thick coat of great complexity of color, so it lends itself well to my more freewheeling techniques.
Here are my tools and how I keep my pastels for a work, I select before I start, and group by value and chroma, each dish has a bit of cornmeal to catch dust and keep the pastels clean.
My Set Up
I did one extra step preparing the surface. My standard surface is Ampersand Pastelbord. It's archival and practically indestructible, and I use it for oil painting as well. It has marbledust in the surface and holds many layers of color. For this demo I added a coat of Colorfix clear pastel primer for more tooth in some areas, you'll see why as I get to the final layers of the painting.
Step One this is my basic lay in of prime elements and value
Step Two Rubbing in undercoats and adding strong colors to give depth the the fur. Starting eyes, to give life to the work from the very beginning.
Step Three Correcting the drawing first, I take a brush and water, and paint and blend the surface, this locks in the underpainting work and fixes the surface for the layers on top. I can always brush off the pastel back to this layer if I don't like what I do.
Step Four This is where the most work takes place and 75% of the time. I begin to detail areas, paying attention to the lie of the fur, the light, and shadow. I lightly blend some areas with my color shaper to add texture, or smooth where I want shine. Eyes complete at this stage except for final highlights. Background will be finalized here too as I begin to work top left to bottom right, if I have to go back to an area, I will have to lay my hand on a piece of paper to protect the previous work.
Step Five Adding the finest details back in, adjusting a little at the edges, softening, sharpening as needed, so there is atmosphere and space around the animal, this background contains about 12 different colors, though it will meld in to one space as the eye sees it.
Done! a giclee print of this work is available at www.AnimalArk.org All proceeds go to help support Chinook.
