I’ve been trying to get to grips with a new paper for skin – not a new paper for me but I’d never successfully used it for skin before. Sometimes things just click – often the ‘click’ follows a lot of frustration and practice 🙂
So here is the beautiful Molly ( a friends daughter) as a bridesmaid at a wedding last year. She is so beautiful not just in looks in her heart too.
I started with my line sketch which I transferred on to the Velour paper. You can’t easily rub out on velour so I like to get her outline first then transfer it.
I started adding the shadows very lightly to bring out her features, first in a sumptuous pink to match her head band.
Then I gradually built up to the lighter skin tones layering the pastel and blending with a rubber blender and a cotton wool bud.
She looks like a bit like a porcelain doll here! I have continued to build on the skin tones so they fill out her features and make her skin come to life.
Next I add her eyes, they took ages to get right making sure I had lovely crisp edges.
Here I have started her hair and I’ve made it quite dark to start with to build definition. Her hair is so light and delicate there was a danger of it all becoming cream / blonde and no definition. The beauty of the Unison Pastels that I use is that they are so vibrant they can add so much light and life to hair.
So here I have added the Unison Pastels on top of the defined hair and it really does make the curls stand out. Blonde is quite a difficult colour to capture in a portrait as it reflect so many colours. I used oranges and peaches to get her hair colour realistic.
You can see the peachy orange colours in her hair here – these are the underlays before I lighten it.
And here is the final portrait. She is just so pretty and perfect that I felt it didn’t need a background or her dress to be finished.
I hope you enjoyed the making of Molly’s portrait, if you’d like to commission a portrait for yourself or a friend there’s lots of information here and you’re welcome to phone me for an informal chat. Tel: 07740 282399