A child's portrait in pastel

Pastel is a particularly lovely medium for creating children's portraits. It has a delicacy and softness missing in many others.
For this particular portrait I worked on Murano paper with a combination of pastel pencils and soft pastels. My initial drawing was done with willow charcoal and then dusted down.


I work on top of this with pastel pencils, which allows a certain precision. I blend with a combination of cotton buds and torchons.


More detail is added in the hair and mouth , still using the pencils. I begin to work soft pastels into the face and use them for blocking in the dress.



I now consider the background. The aim is to keep it soft and somewhat vague, simply in order not to detract from child.



Portrait and background are worked up in more detail and tied together. Below is the finished drawing.

How to create a charcoal portrait of a child

The materials I will be using are thin sticks of willow charcoal, charcoal pencils, black conte crayon, a putty rubber, cotton buds, torchons and a smooth cloth . I am working on pre-soaked and stretched Sanders watercolour paper (140 gms.) As watercolour papers go this is fairly smooth, but it has enough tooth to hold the charcoal powder.


Using the willow charcoal, I quickly rough in the basic shape of the head and position of the various features. Nothing is as yet fixed in stone. Willow charcoal can easily be dusted off and amendments made.


As I am fairly happy with the beginnings of a likeness, I start to strengthen the details and tones of eyes and mouth. This is done with a charcoal pencil ( medium). I also work on building up the shadows. I scrub the willow charcoal over the area and then soften with fingers, torchons or cloth.


I now pay attention to the background , blocking it in with compressed charcoal and charcoal
pencils (dark) The hair is begun.



From here it is a matter of simply refining the detail. To get the precision I want, in the eyes for instance, I use a sharpened conte crayon. But you have to be certain it is in the right place, for conte is a very difficult material to erase! I build layer upon layer to get the depth of shadow I want. On top of the initial willow charcoal, I use the charcoal pencils , stroking them in very gently and then smoothly blending with torchons or cotton buds. A mahl stick is another useful implement as I have often absentmindedly lent my hand upon a drawing and erased or smudged large areas. I also on occasions mask off the areas of the drawing I am not working on.




The finished drawing.




Charcoal is a particularly lovely medium for drawing children. It allows for both delicacy and detail.

Painting a head and shoulders portrait in oils.

Sometimes, the most successful portraits are the simplest. It is very easy, particularly on a commissioned work, to get carried away with backgrounds, clothing , pose or symbol to explain who or what the person is.
This is a portrait of "Mary", a lady I have painted on many occasions. I felt that focussing in on her head, her expression and her gaze, captured her essential dignity and strength of character. To add anything else would have been a mere distraction.

Acrylic/oil portrait painting 2

Here, I am still working in acrylics. I now begin to feel my way into the composition. The figures are roughly drawn in, as is the basic perspective of the background setting. I establish a cool green underpainting for future warm flesh tones.

Using acrylics as an underpainting for oils

The previous oil portrait was done in a traditional manner. This time I am using acrylics as the underpainting. The reason? It dries extremely rapidly so layer upon layer can be built up quickly prior to adding the oils on top. It is spontaneous and can be great fun, as can be seen from the somewhat colourful and apparently chaotic illustration on the right. But the colours I am using are chosen very deliberately to pick up those in the subject.

The finished portrait painting in oils

Over a number of sessions, the details in the head and hands was built up. This involved various techniques- glazing, scumbling and the use of body colour. At times stiff pigment was used, at others the paint was diluted with medium. I favour a stand oil, dammar varnish and turpentine mixture. The background was added during this process as well as details of the chair and clothing.
The background was painted over the edges of the hair . When this was dry, the hair was dragged back over it and a sable rigger used to establish some of the finer wisps.