Morgana: a pastel

This time I tried to use my pastel pencils without a graphite outline. Instead, I did the sketch in a pale blue pastel. I'm pretty pleased with the result, even though everything is less sharp than I usually have it. But that's why they are pastels, right? :-)

I much enjoyed doing this one, and I tried to be bold and not use the felt smudging thingies (no idea what they are called, sorry!) so much.

I know her eyebrows are a bit extreme, but you will know by now that I can never resist doing extreme things with eyebrows :D. And Morgana is not supposed to look ordinary anyway.

This was fun. I'm going to do it again. Yay pastels!

Teen Gawain pastel

There, my first Gawain in multicolour :-). I did this pastel exactly one week ago, but didn't upload it earlier because I wasn't able to take a photograph of it. For some reason, pastels don't scan - or I don't manage to scan them, in any case. I was waiting for some daylight for the photograph, but all week I come home when it's already dark outside. Then yesterday the sun shone, but I forgot all about the photo X(. And today was cloudy. So I finally took a photograph with artificial light, which never looks very good. The colours here are therefore not as they should be... I'll try to do better :-).

I don't seem to manage to use pastels like pastels, do I? I always try to make them smooth... I can't help it: I just like detail :P. So I always do a pencil picture first, and then colour it. I always go back with my pencil to make the lines sharper, too...

Two colour thingies

I said I would be trying a few things with colour, and this picture of Rigantona is one of those experiments. I combined my usual inks (Staedtler pen) with colour pencilling. It's not bad, I think - I especially like the skin tones and the hair. The dress, however, looks rather paler than I had hoped, though I picked the brightest green in my box :/.

I am planning a more ambitious drawing of Comm and the black stallion with which he is gifted by Caesar - but seeing as the design involves a horse it may take some time ;-). In any case, that drawing would be on better (and whiter) paper, and I'm curious what the pencil colours will look like in those circumstances.

Rigantona's brother, Vercingetorix, in pastel pencils. (Click on the picture for a larger version...)

I think that strictly speaking I make these much too smooth; I use my felt tool thingy all the time, blurring just about every pencil stroke. I guess this is my way of attempting more or less realistic colouring :-). On the other hand, my insistence on graphite pencil lines and sharp contours seems a little contradictory. But I rather like this effect.

Oh - I mixed the purple of the cloak. Go me! More colour experiments are imminent, now that I have got myself a book on colour theory and mixing, yay! ;-)

First post...

"Mourning"

I bought four pastel pencils and some coloured pastel paper this week-end and set to work. This was the result. It reminds me vaguely of women's portraits of the Flemish Primitives, though unfortunately it lacks a fair few of the virtuoso qualities of the old masters ;-). Nevertheless I'm fairly pleased with it, and it is not at all bad as the start of a blog, I think... *g*