In my continued attempt to update my blog with some of the paintings I have completed in the past few months… this is a commission from last February of Kermit, owned by Dorris Wiglesworth. Dorris asked me to paint Kermit as a surprise birthday gift for her husband. She told me that the surprise was a great success as her hubby loved the portrait. It’s always a great feeling to know that one of my paintings brings pleasure to someone’s special somebody.
Kermit is another of the WAG dogs that I’ve had the pleasure of painting. Sometimes I’m amazed at how quickly a painting comes together… this was one of them. There were several of different colors in Kermit’s face, but they blended perfectly for me and he just popped out of the painting.
I have been asked how I’m able to blend using the pastel medium. As I paint on velour paper, I’m able to layer different colors over each other in order to ‘mix’ my colors… as if I was using a liquid medium such as oils. Pastel uses the same pigments as oil paints, without the oil binders. And sometimes with pastels, that perfect color doesn’t exist as the colors are limited. But that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve that perfect color by layering the dusts with a very light touch. The challenge in the pastel world is finding those colors to layer to get the desired color that brings the reality of the animal to life.