Lemur Love

Over the weekend, I did a pastel painting of a mother and child lemur pair.

The reference photo is from Pixabay and what caught my eye was the way the baby lemur held on to its mother with absolute trust and how the mother looked back with what I imagine was a protective gaze. It's beautiful and I wanted to capture that sacred security of the mother-child bond.

Photo: Alexas_Fotos

This piece was using soft pastels on light grey Velour paper. I did the background first and from the start, planned to use a brighter and more colourful palette than the photo. What I'm quickly learning is that Velour paper is made for bokeh backgrounds. That very soft, velvety effect is luscious.

Then I used a black NuPastel to mark in the dark areas, and Jack Richeson pastels to fill in the eyes. This is always my favourite part of animal painting and it's when you see the first spark of the painting come to life.

As I started to fill in the fur details for the mother lemur's face, I had a funny sensation. It's hard to explain but I felt like God was very close by, gently working with me on this painting. And when I stepped back and looked at what I'd done, I knew it was good. The lemur felt alive, if that makes sense. Not gonna lie, it gave me chills.

I want to make special mention of these two Rembrandt micro sets that I received as a gift. They are the Earth Reds and the Rose Violets. I generally love purple/violet hues and find that these colours are sparse in most pastel sets. I use them a lot in my animal paintings and for this particular painting, the Earth Reds set worked brilliantly, giving the lemurs that lovely mauve undertone. Rembrandts are very similar to Jack Richeson pastels in consistency - not too soft or hard, and they work great on Velour paper.

Filling in the fur on the body is more difficult than on the face. For one, the surface area is larger so there's a tendency to start drawing random strokes in an attempt to fill the paper. Also, there's a need to make sure that the fur direction of the lemurs is depicted accurately, otherwise things can look haphazard. I used PanPastel magenta and orange to give the bodies a bright underlayer, before layering pastels on top (mostly Jack Richesons and Rembrandts).

I'm very pleased with the final painting. I can see the improvement I'm making in my animal paintings, especially on Velour. But more than painting a realistic artwork, what's more important to me is being able to capture life and emotion. After all, art isn't about being technically skilled but about conveying a point of view, a story. And while I still have a long way to go, today, I felt like I caught a glimpse of what's possible.