A child's portrait in pastel

Pastel is a lovely medium in which to depict children. It has a delicacy and softness unrivalled by other mediums.
In this example I worked on a tinted Murano mount board using a combination of pastel pencils, hard and soft pastels. My initial drawing is done in a sanguine conte chalk.




Using Stabilo pastel pencils I begin putting in the details of the eyes.




And the mouth.




Fairly happy that these are in the right place, I can now turn my attention to larger areas of the face. I begin with pastel pencils and conte crayons but quckly turn to soft pastels to get the delicate blending I require. I use fingers, torchons or even cotton buds to do this.




The finished portrait of Annabel