Janae Lehto Fine Art

After I completed the donkey, I started to do this guy…and was asked by a few people to do it in pastel. OK…I hit a few bumps in the road since I haven’t really worked a lot with pastel. This was my first pastel animal (before the Alaskan Malamute).

I was working on two photos, but not on purpose. My reference was the black and white copy at the top. I realized I needed to go back to my photos and print out a color copy to work with pastels. The photo I chose wasn’t a perfect match, but I went with it anyway. (Not to self…delete the reference photos you decide NOT to use…or…don’t take so many photographs!)

Basically, blocking in color…but I guess I didn’t use a lot of charcoal in the beginning of this one.

Here’s a close up.
 

Adding more to the nose and face…note the lavendar/purple?

Working on the head and fur a little bit….and background still hasn’t been started! (There should be warning sounds here…) 

Because, what was a I thinking? I wanted to add a little more color to the background, I guess, but it wasn’t working. I should have stayed with the photo reference, but being used to close ups and values with charcoal, backgrounds could be abstract. That’s what I was going for, but my attempt to add color didn’t work at first. The goat started to recede and not pop out as much.

(*Cringe…*)

Starting to blend the background. There are certain colors that will be banned from my pastels…Olive green is one of them…

I decided to stop here for a while and even signed it, thinking that it would grow on me and that maybe, it was the goat that I wasn’t fond of. Maybe it was the subject matter after all…

Except it wasn’t. I like goats. I think they’re cute, so…

After I finished the malamute and went to the pastel class, I thought that maybe I overworked the goat. That I blended too much.

Part of what I love most about pastels is the texture that you can SEE. Some pastel artists do blend and create beautiful paintings. I love them! But…I want to go another way. I want to see the strokes of the pastel stick. To figure out when the artist used the flat end of the pastel or sharpened the end of it like a pencil. That’s the beauty of pastel to me.

So I worked on the goat a little more…and added some warmth to him and the background.

I’m getting there.