Spring Cardinal: Pastel Painting and Process

Spring Cardinal - detail, pastel

 I've gotten the opportunity to be a little creative this week. I thought I would start with a challenge over at wetcanvas.com, where a series of photo references are provided and pastel artists choose one (or more) and create their own interpretation of it. It is especially great if you in a rut, like me...I was finding it hard to choose an appropriate subject to use my pastels on because I'm still so unsure about technique.

Here is my process, I used both my PanPastels and my Nupastels:

Step 1: I find the main shapes, and broadly colour in.

Next, I continue to add layers and build up colours and blend

Finally, it's almost ready for scanning - I give it a quick spray of light fixative

Done!
"Spring Cardinal" - 6x7" Pastel on Canson Mi-Teintes paper

I would have to say I'm fairly pleased with my end result. I enjoyed pushing the pastels around and blending, and I learned a little bit on corrections - I corrected the beak area quite a bit, and the technique I read about totally worked. So far battle-pastel is a winning battle :D