Firstly I start with a simple sketch on 200gsm Canson pastel paper, for oil pastels I use the smooth side & for soft the rough tooth side.
I apply a various soft shades of soft smudged colour. I warm my oil pastels and apply them with shammy leather on my finger, smoothing and rubbing into the paper, covering all the white paper as a base for my first layer of oil pastel. I use Caran d' Ache Pablo pastel pencils to do some detail on the eyes & nose. If at this stage I'm not happy with the base of my painting, I tear it up & start another, to me the eyes & nose are the most importants part of my portrait, get these wrong & there's no point in persevering!!
Using Caran d' Ache Neo Pastels, I select my colours & start to block in always applying the pastel in the direction of the fur. I like to get quite a workable amount of pastel down so as to make it easy to start doing a little blending. I tread very lightly on the dark colours as I find building up slowly is the way to go as Oil Pastel is hard to remove mistakes!!
More layers of pastel applied, more detail on the eyes & nose, I now start introducing my favourite pastel...Sennelier..almost like an expensive lipstick. I use a selection of blenders, paper stumps & tortillions, again always applying with the direction of the fur.
On the application of more pastel, more detail is added.
After a few days of applying my layers, I leave the pastel to dry out a little which removes the soft tackiness in readiness for some more detail. If the weather is hot then the oil pastels become quite hard to handle, as it is at the moment...40C !!.
