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 Created: Sunday, 17 March 2013 17:52

Painting portraits with pastels brought my color around more clearly for painting with oils.

It took all mediums: acrylics, watercolor, pastel, gouache before I settled on oils as my dominate medium.

Drawing the protrait with vine charcoal which I inserted into a holder, I could loose edges and ascertain dominate areas before selecting my sticks of color.

Choosing 8-12 sticks of color, you should be able to paint your painting with both pure sticks of color and scumbling the colors.

Scumbling is covering over one color with another color letting the first color shine through.

It is an good way to achieve greys with out using gray sticks. In art terms the word grey means achieving it by the use of complimentary colors.

The word gray refers to black and white gray. Joe Singer’s book, How to Paint Portraits in Pastel is really a good one. I think it features the work of Daniel Green, one of my favorite pastel artists. I know I have his books also.