Since uploading voice over content I have had a few comments and messages asking if I can list the colours I am using. I’ll go into more detail here as to why I don’t list specific colours :).
Why?
There are a few of reasons why I don’t. I honestly believe that there are 20 ways to get to the same end. Pastels is very much like painting. You can mix colours to create so many other colours and this is exactly how I work. I mentioned in the video of ‘Charlie and How to draw curly fur in pastels’ (shared below) that I sand down pastel sticks and mix colours which I then apply to the paper with Sofft Tools. This colour I am mixing may be from 2-4 different colours and this colour will vary depending on how much of each colour you mix. I wouldn’t want someone who may be watching these videos to think ‘Well, I don’t have those pastel brands so I cannot create something this like’. That simply isn’t true. By practising and experimenting you become more confident in which colour you select – And honestly, there are many times where I pick up a pencil start using it and think ‘nope that isn’t right, pick up another’.
If you don’t have soft pastel sticks or Panpastels you can absolutely use just your pencils from start to finish. If I use my pastel pencils I am layering the pencils and then blending them out and applying more colour on top to create the colour I am after, blending it out again and so on.
A couple of exact colours I used or would recommend..
I did use soft pastels blended down on the sand paper for this base layer on Charlie but if you just had pencils the one colour I would say that is pretty close would be the Derwent Saffron. That is a beautiful cream colour and works well for highlights to. For the whitest highlight I used the Caran D’ache Chinese White pastel pencil.
Light source changes everything..
Colour will vary considerably depending on what the light source. So the colours I used for this would not be what you may use for your portrait. In the reference photograph, Charlie was outside so it was natural light. If the photograph was taken indoors I guarantee his fur colour would have been far darker, more of those yellows and oranges throughout which would have required a different base layer.
Look at my dog Roxy here as an example. Both photographs taken outside but in completely different lightings. The first was a dull over cast day, actually ideal for photographing black dogs. As you can see the black fur still has lots of variances in tones where as the image on the right, taken when the sun was setting and the warm light was coming through the trees of the forest. This although pretty, has resulted in sharp shadows to the right side of her face and less definition in the fur direction. But look at the difference in colour. In the left she looks like a black and white dog whereas in the right the black fur looks brown. The midtones do not look grey or a light shade of black they look brown almost reddish.
A handy tool..
The above image shows how the ‘Eyedropper Tool’ can really help if you’re struggling to identify specific colours. There are many free apps that you can get that will do this.
Simply hover over the colour of interest and it will appear in a larger area for you to exactly pin point the colour you need.
A down side to pastels = makes identifying colours difficult..
One big disadvantage I feel when working in pastels is the pencil colour is not listed on the pencil themselves. It’s just a selection of numbers BUT these numbers wear away easily and reasonably quickly as you use the pencils. As I use 3 different pastel pencil sets and have over maybe 200 colours there is no easy way to list these colours. I may have 60 pencils in front of me and I am swapping and mixing between them so much that I wouldn’t get any drawing or video content uploaded if I had to mention each individual colour. As I say, I also put a colour down and am like ‘nope, not what I am after’. The good thing with pastels on Pastelmat is that if you do a wrong layer it’s no big deal. Go over it.
Colour or contrast?
Quite often its not the colours that require attention it’s the contrast. Are the light areas light enough and the dark areas dark enough. That is what makes a portrait, any artwork stand out and look that much more realistic. Without contrast the portrait will be flat.
Pay close attention to where these highlights and shadows are and then the rest will follow. There is no set formula for choosing the exact colour. It’s all a learning curve and the answer no one likes is just practice and also the ability to make the mistakes and learn from them.
Trial and error..
A good example of this would be my recent Cheetah portrait. When I do the full video with voice over I will explain this in more detail. But when I first started it the amount of times I would put the pencil to the paper and had to swap it for another colour was ridiculous. I just couldn’t find the right combination and colour I was happy with. But purely from learning ‘that colour isn’t right, lets try another’ I was able to eliminate pencils in front of me and through trial and error came up with a combination I was happy with.
I hope that this blog post is useful. I do plan on also making a voice over on this topic as it’s something I am asked frequently :).