This is Fiona. My sister-in-law's Chorkie (Yorkie/Chihuahua mix). Fiona is one of my favorite models and I have done many, many portraits of this lovable dog. In this portrait as with that of last week's chicken, I used only a limited palette (black, white, red, yellow, blue and yellow ochre) of Pan Pastels and a few tools. No pencils. No soft pastels. I love it. I love just working with Pan Pastels and creating these soft, impressionistic style paintings. Oh sure, with some pastel pencils I could have turned this work into a realistic rendering, practically photo-realistic. Well not really since I'm not Chuck close. But what I want is to create beautiful paintings without thought to painstaking detail. I want my work to be free-flowing and energetic. I got that here.
I've done several works in the past year using only Pan Pastels but many others with pastel pencils as well. Not sure where I wanted to take my use of this medium, underneath was my desire to use just one medium and this is it. I finished this piece and the last in under an hour without intending to be quick. I just started and worked and stopped because my piece was done.
I am so pleased that I'll continue to create images with Pan Pastels and nothing else. Wow! Just Wow! It's a Eureka moment. You can watch this creation in time lapse on YouTube. I'd like to say I can ditch my other supplies but I can't. I teach so I need those media to share but I can see a time when what I'll be teaching will be my particular technique with Pan Pastels. I know to some folks this may not seem like a big deal but I've been searching for this all of my life; a medium that works for me. As I aged and arthritis complicated the use of my fingers and hands I've been forced to limit the media I used and adapt those that I love to my limitations.
Wow! it feels so good. It feels like coming home.
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