Por­trait of Kris

I met Kris in 2004 after she’d just returned from India. The first piece that we cre­ated was an oil pas­tel draw­ing, Shim­mer in the oil pas­tels sec­tion. Kris has a won­der­ful deep glow about her and India red was a nat­ural back­drop for her por­trait. I had this life draw­ing on dis­play at Hip­bone Stu­dio where my col­league, Julie Neil­son fell in love with it. It hangs in her liv­ing room above the fireplace.

I used two dif­fer­ent tech­niques for the high­lights on this pas­tel draw­ing. The face and upper torso are ren­dered in a removal process, the legs are built up in a tra­di­tional dark to light method. Com­pare the two and notice how the upper body glows with a tremen­dous lumi­nos­ity. I have a video in the works teach­ing this tech­nique. Sign up for my mail­ing list to be the noti­fied for this exclu­sive offer via email.

Nude pas­tel draw­ing done with Schminke pas­tels on Rives BFK paper. Col­lec­tion of Jule Neilson.