Okay, so I'm not fond of wearing those light pastel colors, but, now drawing in pastels--that's a whole different beast. And, oh, what a beast...This lovely snow leopard had just woken up from a summer day's zoo nap when I first photographed him. I'm not quite sure what he saw or heard up above--likely some kind of plane or bird flying above. I love the ability to build a drawing in layers that allows some forgiveness and corrections. Definitely an advantage to developing a more accurate representation of the 3-dimensional structure for a big cat like this.
There are parts of me that forgot how pleasurable it is to draw (or paint) depending on what you consider pastels to be. I consider this image more as a drawing than a painting, but that's just me. I have covered the entire surface of the paper with medium, so according to my past instructor, I'm definitely painting...But, then again, that instructor said that getting a good painting on a dark field was difficult and just not as attractive. On the other hand, I love the dark charcoal Fabriano Tiziano surface, and I think I covered it quite nicely. I've also used fixative throughout the process, which many pastelists don't like because it often darkens the colors too much. I have to say that I've become a really big fan of Sennelier's Latour fixative, which really darkens things only slightly (and often only temporarily).
