# pastel portrait



## sunlover

New to pastels. This is my first completed pastel of the face. Mainly used Nupastels. I wonder if I should have included some background? Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks


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## George924

Hi and welcome to the forums...very nice piece for your first portrait. I don't think you should have a background in the piece, unless you had planned on it before you started I would be concerned of messing it up. Really like the color scheme going on blues and oranges are always a favorite of mine.


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## sunlover

Thanks George for the feedback. I have been dabbling with acrylic ,,charcoal,,etc.and finally decided to try pastel. I think I have finally found what I love to work with. Hopefully I can post better and better works on this great site!!


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## chanda95

Pastels and me have never really gotten along. I admire anybody who can do them..I like this a lot.


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## sunlover

Thanks Chanda. Love your Art. I will have to put more of my stuff up on this site !


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## pastelartprints

sunlover said:


> New to pastels. This is my first completed pastel of the face. Mainly used Nupastels. I wonder if I should have included some background? Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks


Hi, I would love to share the great characteristics of painting with pastels there is always one downside, and that’s the mess. You can also include your background by following these steps:

Keep your surroundings as clean as possible when you work, you should start by putting down a dust-sheet underneath your easel.
Then you need to deal with the pastel dust coming off your work surface.
One option is to use an easel that is tilted slightly towards you at the top, meaning loose dust tends to just drift off the surface. You can buy specific pastel easels which have this tilt.
Another option is to put something at the bottom of your drawing board to catch the dust that runs down your paper – a ‘V’ shaped gutter made of aluminum foil works well.

I have some tutorials from Australian award-winning artists. If you would love, I can share it with you.


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