Top Center: Our model is Haley, my great niece, practicing her violin lesson! The photography session was a huge success. She ignored me quite nicely through a whole roll of film, making it extremely difficult to choose which photograph to use! Many times you can combine portions of more than one photo as reference material. But Haley is already an experienced model at her young age, so that won't be necessary for this demo.       Top left: My painting taboret. Top right: Sennelier soft pastels, 250 piece set. Left: The pastels used in this painting are the round Rembrandt soft pastels as well as the few NuPastel hard pastels shown in the foreground.

     To begin this painting I  made an acrylic wash using purple, cerulean blue and burnt umber. Using a soft rag (or paper towel) I scrub color into the museum board to cover the white, vaguely positioning the figure and violin at the same time. There must be no hard edges in order to be able to make adjustments in my drawing after the acrylic dries.

      The purpose of this view is to show how I cover the surface in large masses with pastels. I have used a limited palette of yellow ochre, burnt umber, cerulean blue, with black laid over the blue in the background to make it recede. You can easily see the rough texture of the museum board.

      At this beginning stage I like to break the hard pastels and use them on the long side in order to cover the areas quickly. No drawing at this stage, all edges are left soft and blurry. If you are a believer in the short cut of "rubbing" your pastels to blend them do it here.  Tip: I NEVER blend the final layers of pastel!

      Now I have used a burnt umber Conte hard pastel and defined the figure and violin placement.  Everything is relative to that first stroke, and still no hard edges. Adjustments are constantly being made, working on the surrounding area as well as the figure.  I continue building the face structure with flesh pastels as well as the violin base color, raw sienna, conscious my light source is coming from the left front.

       I must remember to slant the violin more to show the F holes in the Upper Bout. Much more interesting.

     Constantly checking the painting against the photograph I see that I don't have the same tilt to the head.  Now I must decide if this is crucial or do I sacrifice "tilt" for "freshness" -- or do I start over.

       Since the photograph will not be compared with the finished painting, I feel confident the composition is sound and the likeness is very close, so I will continue to the final stage.     

        Putting aside the photograph, I concentrate on color. There is no blending with fingers anywhere  on this painting, not even background. Color is built up by applying pastel in strokes of many layers. Each stroke pushes the pastel into the support. In certain places the under painting is left to show through.