This latest portrait is of Pippin with the remarkable blue eye. It’s a small headshot - 6 x 9” - and is to complement another portrait I did for the owner back in 2012 of Ben. I chose the same colour Ingres Pastel Paper and decided first of all to straighten the head. Usually I quite like a tilt but it would have looked weird next to the portrait of Ben so I sketched the basic shapes before blocking in the main tonal colours. I focused on the tongue and other bright and intense acres - this was done using soft pastels and Conte pastels. I haven’t shown many of the stages when I switched to using pastel pencils as, with smaller portraits, the shifts are so subtle in tone, texture and hue variation, you can’t really notice much difference. However, these small alterations make all the difference in building up texture, shine, depth and colour in the coat. Finally, the whiskers go on which are the fine details you can see.
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