"Alexa" WIP (Work in Progress)

18" x 24" Pastel on pastel board

My 18 year old daughter posed for my Monday Portrait painting group, which was especially delightful for me.. it forced her to sit for 3 hours so I could work on a good , long painting of her! She'll sit for three sessions... so I have the chance to take my time and build it up slowly, and get into fairly good detail. Stage one is my charcoal rendering where I simply place the subject on the board, make decisions about composition,and try to accurately render the features. Stage two shows how I layed in color with pastels, working in the dark values, and then beginning to lay in some of the lighter tones, so I can gauge how light and how dark I'll eventually work into the peice. There was a stage in between these two, where after laying down some dark blue and purple tones, simply focusing on the shadows, I took a wet sponge and scrubbed into the painting, lightly smearing the pastels around, giving me a nice smoothe base of shadows that became more permaanant on the board. This allowed me to work back into the sandy-textured board with fresh pastels... ready to accept more pigment into the tooth. Stayed tuned for the next stages... I can't wait for Alexa to sit still again!