As a horror writer and artist, Netflix’s Wednesday appealed to me on so many levels. However, instead of doing a straight up realistic portrait of her using coloured pencils, I painted this Wednesday Addams portrait in oil pastels. I wanted to make it my version of Wednesday, and here is my step-by-step guide how to do it.
Stylized Portraits
By the way, I am inspired by oil pastel artist BlackBean CMS when I drew and painted this portrait. I didn’t want this to look exactly like Jenna Ortega (I love her though), so the goal is not a replica of her photo.
Materials used:
Faber Castell HB pencil
Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper (gray tones) (more textured side)
Paul Rubens 48 Oil Pastels Set
Step 1: Sketching
First, I started out with a quick sketch. I have this weird method of always drawing the left (my left) eye first, then the nose, then the mouth, before I move to the other eye. But you do you! 🙂
The toned paper could be a little hard to see your pencil marks. You can use a darker (B or 2B) pencil if you like. Pastels are opaque so they usually will cover your pencil marks.
Step 2: Paint One Side First
I don’t use glassine, so I paint from the left to the right to avoid smearing. Don’t worry if the portrait doesn’t look good yet; trust the process and keep going.
I started laying down the skin colour, clothes and background and shading as I go. At this stage the portrait is nearly half complete.
Step 3: Paint the Other Half
You can see that the tone of the skin on the right side is slightly too warm, which I will fix after. The trick is to lay light layers and blend (with finger or a silicone tipped applicator) because this paper won’t take it too many layers. If you go in too thick you won’t be able to layer much.
Here, I filled in the neck, the collar and the face. You can keep tweaking until you are satisfied.
Afterward, I filled in the other braid and tweaked the face, including putting the catchlights in the eyes with a Posca Uni pen.
Step 4: Finishing Touches
After some finishing touches (rest of the dress on the right, freckles, etc.), the portrait is done!
Time taken from beginning to end:
By the way, if you are looking for inexpensive but artist quality pastels, I recommend Paul Rubens. These are really easy and great to work with. 🙂
