[JohnWolff]

Hi Jacob,

Thanks so much for taking what is obviously a great deal of time to review my pastel portrait. I have been trying to follow the process that Cuong Nguyen uses in his pastel portraits (icuong.com). The pencils he uses are the CarbOthello, supplemented with Nupastel sticks. I don’t like the sticks because they are messy to use and produce a lot of dust. My dungeon studio is messy enough without adding to it. I fashioned a cardboard ‘catch basin’ if you will, that is placed on my easel underneath the paper to catch the dust. The pencils are more to my liking. The paper that I used was Sennelier La Carte Card….basically sandpaper. One cannot erase in the usual sense, only tap areas to loosen the pigment or lift with a small piece of tape. But my drawing skills are not good enough to lay down the correct line the first time, so I resorted to using a kneaded eraser, which did not seem to mar the surface that much and gave me a fighting chance on the drawing. I don’t plan on experimenting with other papers or pencils until I get more comfortable with the basics. I have used some of the Canson papers for my graphite/charcoal pencil work..Canson makes the worst watercolor paper…at least for me (Arches is the best, followed by Fabriano). My current media are watercolor, graphite or charcoal pencils.

[JohnWolff]

Good grief! I never really expected anyone to look over my sketch so I did not check back until now (April 17)! But thank you all for your reviews and suggestions regarding the hair (to be seen as a mass, instead of ‘strings’), the eye being too small and some values being too dark vs too light. I apologize for making you all think that I did not care and want to thank you again for your suggestions. Pastel pencil on sanded paper is an real challenge for me since I always start with a pencil drawing on regular paper and then transfer it to the desired surface….so I can make and correct all the errors beforehand….

John Wolff

[JohnWolff]

I was trying to use pastel pencils for the first time, but the paper does not permit erasures! So I resorted to a kneaded eraser anyway and did what I thought was possible. I think I am close, but “something just doesn’t look right”, which always seems to be correct….Thank you for your consideration…

 

 

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