Portrait of my kids

Human portraits are hard. Just one millimetre off and suddenly you don't get the likeness of the person. Which is why I'm posting an odd angle of the portrait I did of my kids. From this angle, it at least looks like them, lol. Straight on, my daughter looks a little "off". Don't know why.

I'm writing this short post just as a record of my attempt to do a human portrait. This was using coloured pencils (mostly Derwent Lightfast and Faber Castell Polychromos) on Pastelmat, with a pastel background. Pastelmat is so lovely for coloured pencils. It gives a very soft effect and you can layer lots and lots without filling the tooth of the paper too quickly. 

This stage at the bottom was when I realised how nice the flesh tones go on this paper. Blending is easy and Pastelmat takes solvents with no problem. Highlights too, go on brilliantly, even on top of dark colours. Too bad Pastelmat is so expensive.