On Friday I started work on the commissioned portrait of a beautiful chestnut mare. I'm working in pastel on Clairefontaine Pastelmat paper (light grey) - size A3
I will be emailing progress pics to her owner Monday or Tuesday, once I've got a reasonable colour base down so she can decide whether she wants the background left plain or whether I need to put in a very simple tree/skyline background.
For the first time in ages I decided to 'grid' the reference picture to help me with placement of markings in the portrait. I haven't used a grid for ages but as I'm a little under the weather just now (just a cold, not Man Flu) I felt I probably needed the security of the grid to ensure accuracy :-)
close up
A little more progress with base colour - photos are coming up very dark, the pastelmat is very light grey in reality
Today David and I should have been manning the Air Ambulance stand at a horseshow in Kent, but given the weather forecast for high winds and torrential rain all day we decided to withdraw. I doubt we'd have had many visitors and the (rather flimsy) marquees wouldn't have provided much protection from the elements. So I had some unexpected spare time to work on the portrait this afternoon
But .... I had to have the daylight lamps working (in September)!!!??? and really struggled to get motivated. So this is where I got to this afternoon. The colour is showing much too red but no point in spending time adjusting the photos till I'm ready to send WIP pics to the client:
Beautiful work, he kooks stunning already...and I know what you mean about daylight lamps. Mine have been out already too :)
ReplyDeleteThis is looking really great Sue, looks almost like CP you have got so much detail into it.
ReplyDeletethat is gorgeous :D that eye is so lifelike!
ReplyDeleteThanks Chrissy, She's a very pretty mare and the owner has sent some lovely clear ref. photos (makes a nice change) LOL
ReplyDeleteHi Bev, I'm using mostly Conte, Caran D'ache and Carbothello Stabilo pastel pencils which are harder and hold a point better - hence their similarity to cps I guess .... there will be a lot more layering/blending to follow though as she has a beautiful rich chestnut colour.
Thanks Jennifer :-)
Grrrrr! One more reason to dislike Google! I tried to post a comment but Google wanted my mobile phone # and when I tried to maneuver away from that window, I lost the comment!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I said that no one paints horses any better than you do and this one looks great already.
Hope David's mum is settled somewhere soon as I know how draining doing all that driving can be.