My husband asked me to do this pastel portrait of Billy for a surprise gift to one of his good friends. Sadly, Billy is no longer with us and his family miss him dearly.
I really enjoyed using my pastels for this piece. He has such beautiful markings and the colours were just a joy to capture. I did create a few layouts prior to starting his drawing to see what background colour best complimented him. I decided to go with beiges, yellow tans and the lighter halo behind to make him pop out even more from the paper. The yellow shades in the background were chosen because of those similar tones in his fur.
My material choice..
This was my third pastel portrait piece and I am loving using this new medium. I honestly wouldn’t want to work without them now. I use Pastelmat paper and I can honestly say I love it. It takes endless layers and the colour saturation is perfect. I used a mixture of pastel pencils from 3 sets. These sets are Faber Castell Pitt Pencils, Carbothello Pastel Pencils and Derwent Pastel Pencils. I buy these open stock and only use the lightfast colours from these sets.