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.

Big Carriage Horse

This is the finished painting. I quit using the hard pastels and went to very soft ones to punch up the color. I had fun doing this one and let myself take 2 weeks to do it.

This big guy was in Canada when we visited this summer. There were lots of draft horses in the streets, and I can still smell their horsey smell when I look at this.

Next step

I am continuing to work up the areas with more color. This one has the main areas in proportion except the pupil of the eye. It isn't right at all. I also want more intensity of color on the left side to balance the greens on the upper right.

It helps to see it on the blog and get another view of how it is looking. The mane on the left needs to be punched up also. And a few more very dark values.

I have used multiple layers of fixative to be able to go back in and rework areas. I have probably 8 layers. Still needs work.

Gourd and Queen

This didn't work the way I had wanted. I like the butterfly tho.

more darks

next step: more pastel

Putting in some darks

I started putting in more darks. The angle of the photo is poor, but you can see the process.

a start

I have started this drawing of a carriage horse I saw in Quebec Canada. It took me awhile to get the proportions and the lines in place.
Then I have started putting in values with some color. This is a light sketching of pastel pencil on gray canson paper. I will need to put in my darker darks next. I am going to try a new fixative I got at the last IAPS convention to layer the darks.
to be continued