This copy of a Haddon Sundblum oil painting was done in pastel. I have separate stations for all mediums in my AZ studio: oil, pastel, w.c., charcoal, my animation desk, and of course, my work in comics. It beats the old days when I’d have to move everything out of the way if I wanted to paint something in my drawing area.
Unlike the Sargent oil study, I did do a fairly careful line drawing of the girl’s face first, because I wanted to nail down the likeness before I began in with the pastel. I hadn’t use pastel in a while and wanted to proceed with a bit more insurance, before slathering a lot of messy pigment all over the board. I sprayed the charcoal outline with fixative and started in with the pastel colors. From there, the procedure is the same: Start with the flat, average colors and tones. Get those in place before going into the subtler intermediate tones that give her face its smooth softness. Much of my art training involves first putting in a mosaic of flat, colored shapes and getting those in place before eventually arriving at a round-looking object. It’s amazing when you begin putting light colors on the form—things finally start to pop and look dimensional.
Hope you like what I’ve done.
The Dude
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