With this portrait, I was hoping to mix two media–pastel and coloured pencils–as an experiment. My original plan was to draw Megan Fox with coloured pencils and use PanPastel on the hair as underpainting to cut down the time. However, because I didn’t use pastel paper, this plan did not quite work out.
I always start in this order when I draw a portrait–the eyes, nose, mouth and the shape of the face, and this drawing of Megan Fox is no different. The hair always goes last because it’s such a pain. If you are a coloured pencils portrait artist, you would know. The hair often takes me 2-3 times as long as the face!
Paper Matters
My biggest mistake was thinking I was using mixed media paper. However, I was using Bristol vellum paper. It didn’t have enough tooth to grab the pastel, which I did two layers. The paper could only take in so much–it was difficult for coloured pencils (Prismacolor Premier) to go on top.
You could see that the black from the pencil was just not getting into the paper at this point. I ended up erasing the rest of the PanPastel (it is erasable) and drew the rest of the hair stroke by stroke. Sigh.
Pastels v Coloured Pencils
Mistake #2: pastels are more opaque than coloured pencils, so my coloured pencils had a hard time showing up on the dark shades of the PanPastel.
What started out as a *hopefully* quick portrait ended up taking 6 hours, most of which was spent on the hair. It didn’t turn out too badly, which is the only consolation hehehe.
Pastels Next
After I finished drawing Megan Fox, I did purchase Caran d’ache Neocolor II water soluble wax pastels, Conté à Paris pastel pencils, pastel fixative and pastel paper. I hope I can produce portraits quicker using pastels. As much as I love using coloured pencils to draw realistic portraits, they just take so long, and I want to experiment with another medium to produce more art work. 🙂
