View the slideshow of the entire process:
"Tundra Queen" is a portrait painting of Dharma WindSong of A Wolf Adventure. Beginning with a large sheet of Crescent Moorman suede board, I worked this piece in soft pastels including Rembrandts and a few Unisons.
My Palette included (but might not be limited to) these colors: Burnt umber (background), raw umber (background grasses), white (wolf and snow), ultramarine blue (wolf and sky), creams (wolf and snow highlights), greys, cobalt blue (sky), earth greens (background), purple (snow highlights), and a few other local colors as you may see in this picture. I work fairly all over the place, bouncing to and fro, and I usually pick my palette by eye, and save the pastels aside while working on a project, so I can quickly change from one color to another without having to remember "Which one did I use for this???".
Below is a step by step description of this painting as it progressed, written after the fact so forgive me if I don't remember everything. I took photos of this painting in various stages along the way, sometimes at night, sometimes during the day, so the lighting will vary from photo to photo. Also, the board is laying at an angle on my drawing board so it is a bit skewed compared to the final piece which was photographed at a proper angle. But aside from that, I hope you will find it helpful to you in your pastel journeys.
Stage 1: The beginnings of planning the sketch down onto the suede matboard. Working with such a strong background color is going to be challenging, but it will be dark enough to give the white of the wolf something to stand out against. Here you can see it roughed in, drawn freehand with a white conte pencil. I begin to put local color down using Rembrandt pastels, with blues for the shadows and lighter creams/whites for the highlights of the leg.
Stage 2: I begin blocking in more local color at this stage, working here and there, not quite sure yet where the background will go. I plan it as I go along.
Stage 3: More color going down. The first layer of pastel is always the quickest to go and most important. It is with these colors that the details will go down over top of.
Stage 4: It's starting to come together now. I use some Unisons on the background to give a smoother layer is the Unison pastels are a creamy buttery smooth soft pastel (juicy!). They're about the size of your thumb though so are harder to get fine details with, but for building up a background, they can't be beat! They're just soft enough but not too soft, when it comes to working on suede. On the wolf, I'm being fairly liberal, not following every hair to a T. More so just stroking the fur in the directions it goes on the wolf. Having met Dharma in person, I know her fur and how it goes and I can imagine myself stroking her fur for real, as I stroke in the pastels on this painting.
Stage 5: Working up the background now. Determining where things will go, what colors to use for the sky and such. There is more color on the wolf now and she's almost filled in.
Stage 6: The "canvas" is covered now. On to building up layers of color. I determined not to use the entire piece of board, but rather to cut it short at what you see here.
Stage 7: A build up of more layers on the background starts to make it look smoother, as it covers the red brown of the suede board underneath.
Stage 8: Nearly there! The painting sat at this stage for awhile as I tried to figure out where to take it next. I still wasn't quite "sold" on the background yet. I really love the right corner where her paw is. The paw is about life-sized in this painting, perhaps slightly larger. It makes you want to reach out and touch her!
Stage 9: So close. I worked up some more layers on the wolf, and am still not quite sure what to do with the background. I've never been to the tundra yet, so I have to study and learn more about it first. This photo shows the true colors of the painting fairly well. It must have been a nice light day when I took this!
Stage 10: I'm there! After spending weeks researching and learning about tundra vegetation, I quickly went through and added the final layer to the background. I added more layers of soft color to the wolf to smooth her coat out and soften the darks, and called this piece finished!
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