This portrait is of a lady I never met, but her husband has started coming along to my art classes and despite enjoying sketching and painting in watercolours and acrylics, wanted me to this portrait of his lovely wife, Doris, in pastels. Firstly I decided upon a warm grey pastel paper (Canson Mi-Tientes Touch) to match the frame and mount John gave me and cut it to size as the mount has an oval aperture. I sketched the outline of Doris and put in some base colours in white and cream. As the picture is quite detailed I chose to work with Faber-Castell pastel pencils from the outset and continued blocking-in rough areas of colour and tone without blending, This layering technique allows me to put texture into the painting to describe the facets of the face, direction of hair curls and freckles, which then get softened as more layers are applied. John suggested I paint her in a slightly different dress from another photo, which was one of her favourites, and also had a white daisy design and a larger white collar. The design is quite bold so I softened some of the leaves before balancing more of the lights and darks and adding a few more wispy hairs. As you can see from the other photos she looks a little different in each one so I hope I’ve captured her!
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