scholastics #1

The first Scholastics specific piece I did this year was a portrait of one of my friends. He is drinking through a straw and is slightly turned towards the viewer. I am friends with this person and spend a good amount of time with them, but I also needed to create something. I didn’t have a project in mind but I had this photo so I just started making it and ended up with a full piece.

This piece was made using chalk pastels on toned pastel paper. I used a myriad of colors of chalk pastels. I used a blue toned pastel paper. I think it might have been a stronger choice to use a gray or off white pastel paper, but the blue looks fine as it is.

I used value and color to create this piece. The value is created by the different shades of colors I used. I would add white to the color to lighten it and the regular color as the dark value. This contrast created depth on the portrait. I began by just sketching the picture onto my paper and coloring it in from there. The wavy stripes in the background were not my first choice of a background, but I liked the contrast that was created by the yellow and green on the face. My next step with this project could be to really saturate my colors. They already are pretty saturated, but I could push my values a little more.