Okay, so... I've been MIA. But I have an excuse! I had meetings with representatives from both Ampersand, and Crescent, and they piled a TON of samples on me to play around with. So if you want to know what I got, or what my reviews are on the products, just ask away.

And my fiance and I celebrated our anniversary, which we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. The Roy Lichtenstein gallery was there, and it was AWESOME. Seriously, if you can go, DO IT.


Materials:
- Gray 5x7 Ampersand Pastelbord
- Prismacolor NuPastels
- Charcoal
- Artsyposes.com for reference image.

So anyways, I'm starting this project on a gray 5x7 Ampersand Pastelbord (that's the correct spelling, don't worry). It's pretty small for my usual figure drawing work (which is normally on a 22x30 sheet), so this will be interesting.

The pastels I am using in this demonstration are Prismacolor's 'NuPastel's, which is a hard pastel.

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But to start, I like doing the initial sketch of the composition in charcoal. Just because charcoal is cheap and easily removable, it makes it ideal for quick underlining sketches. This is especially helpful if you're doing something such as a still-life or a landscape, since just sketching out the composition first before diving in with colors can make an entire world of difference. Of course, because of the small size of the board and not using a charcoal pencil, there really isn't much detail going on here yet, aside from what is in shadow, and what is in light. We can worry about shades later, since this is purely to get an idea of placement. And also, it's absolutely pointless to worry about details at the moment. We're going over the charcoal in the pastels, anyways, so all that hard work on details will be for nothing.

I'll post the next steps later, since it's currently 1:30 AM. >< But as always, feel free to ask questions, or even critique if you notice a glaring issue in the drawing.