drawing for new painting

first block in.

This woman worked in our coffee bar in London. She served us breakfast. She is from Spain, brown hair and bright blue eyes.

Liam McCabe

This is a commission for my cousin that I have been working on. I started with pastel pencils and moved to hard pastels and soft pastels. I will put a few finishing touches on it, but am pretty satisfied with it. I will work on the eye lids some.

The big challenge here was the mouth. I didn't want to contend with all those teeth. You can't really see it in this reference photo, but the big smile in the original photo has lots of teeth and the grin closed the eyes somewhat. So, I changed the mouth to being closed
To do this, I had to shorten the chin and narrow the cheeks somewhat. Just a small amount, but these little adjustments requires knowledge of a face. I also changed the colors of the shirt and sweater for more color near the face.

I hope his grandmother likes it.

Man in New Mexico

I saw this guy in Santa Fe this year after the IAPS Convention for pastels in Albuquerque. I took his picture and started blocking in a pastel of him. I was having some trouble with it and decided to do a drawing in pencil to check out the values. I can see where I want to change some things and I would like to go back in this one and add more really dark areas. My pencil would only get so dark, so I may have to use charcoal over it.

what is she thinking?

This is not a daily painting...it took more like 3 weeks and I am not sure if I am finished. It is pastel on Wallis paper.
I look the reference photo of this little East Indian girl in Chicago this year. She was very serious and direct in her stare. I have another view I may try also.
I often do more than one pose or more that one painting of the same pose for a portrait. I don't try to get it the first time, and that helps the pressure of getting a likeness.