Life pastel figure

Pastel on paper 10" x 12"

Completed Summer 2010. After working with just charcoal for quite some time I got bored and wanted to experiment with some pastels. All the poses during this time period were somewhere between 30 - 45 minutes. I was finding myself stuck in between looking at this as a painting and trying to determine correct colors and the usual considerations with charcoal of what values should I depict. Through all of this, I look back at this one now and see only problems with proportions ( like the size of the arm in relation to the rest of the figure ) - these items are what bother me now. It is amazing what does and does not go through my mind while in the process of working. On some occasions, I am able or maybe just lucky enough to catch problem areas as they are presenting themselves. It seems to be a juggling act that sometimes works and other times is just a mess.

Life pastel portrait

Pastel on paper 10" x 8"

Completed Spring 2010. This is one of those "end of the night" pastels when I didn't really have enough time to complete a full scale drawing. If I remember correctly, we were painting, which means that it was one long pose over 3 hours with a few breaks thrown in. I was not happy with the painting I had done so I decided to just do a small pastel with the remaining time. This pastel reminds me of how things sometimes work out best when I just turn off the critical analysis and just let things go on autopilot. After a frustrating evening with the painting I was in a mode of not caring about the outcome. I was so much turned off that when the pose time was over I was sort of surprised to see what I had done - I did not remember even doing most of this while I was in process. Now, if I could just figure out how to get back into this mode at will....hmmm.