Cariad was a surprise gift for my clients mum. Sadly, Cariad passed away shortly after the reference photograph I was asked to used for this piece was taken. Unbelievably she was 22 years old! She had such a young face I honestly thought the photo was taken years previous.
There wasn’t the ideal level of detail in the reference photograph but it did have a nice level of contrast and her colouring was lovely.
Tip: When working with pastels on white paper… Keeping it clean!
This was done on the white pastelmat paper and with this you have to work slightly differently. Normally, I work around a lot but with the white paper to ensure no pastel got onto the white paper I started in the top left corner and worked from there. Areas where I did start away from the left side I used glassine paper under my hand as I always do and where possible avoided working over areas that already had pastel down. Pastelmat paper grips the pastel pigment perfectly so there is hardly, if any transfer its just good practice to not get into the habit of leaning over parts.