Category Archives: Pastel

Book Cover for David’s Journey

Posted on by Tracy Bezesky

This is the cover, not approved yet. Rendered in oil pastel on brown paper 11.5″x14″ scale 127%. One of the most challenging pages, since it had so many people and had to come from my imagination, and from a country I’ve never been. I could have photographed the back cover adjoined to it. I will do that tomorrow.

New Life Drawing of Female Nude

Posted on by Tracy Bezesky

Our room where we normally do our life drawing at the Art Museum was occupied for the evening. We ended up in a store room, but there was grand piano, what luck! I have to work that in later. I see I drew piano too small so I will have to fix that. I spent my hour and a half concentrating on the figure and getting it done. The hands were fanned out and toes were curled, that was most challenging, but I think that worked. Polychromos Pastel on Brown Pastel Paper 12×19″. I liked the Polychromos Pastels would like to have set of 60. 😉

Herding Cattle Illustration

Posted on by Tracy Bezesky

This is the illustration for the cattle herding boy, I haven’t rendered the boy yet because I am wondering if I want to redo it. I was experimenting with how to do the water and I’m not sure if want to try it another way. I’m also not liking the ribbed paper. I will start the next illustration on Canson paper and see how that goes before I finish this one. I am my own worst critic. 😉

Boy in Oil Pastel

Posted on by Tracy Bezesky

I thought I would try a portrait of a boy in Oil Pastel. He is a relative of the author of the picture book, who lives in the African village. I wanted to test oil pastel on a subject, because Oil Pastel is not so fragile as soft pastel. My biggest concern was to render detail, but this shows it is posssible, and this is a scan, which worked well. I like how the oil pastel looks soft and fleshy. I had to work with the colors I had. Holbein Oil Pastel on 4.5″x6″ sanded brown pastel paper.

Inertia (Final)

Posted on by Tracy Bezesky

Here is the finished pastel version on Canson Touch Card, using Mungyo Semi-Hard Pastels. I like the sandy card substrates, the tooth works better than paper, and scans true to there appearance. It ended up looking like some of our local stone outcroppings. Not intended but it works.

Last Night’s Life Drawing (WIP)

Posted on by Tracy Bezesky

Last night we used a more dramatic light on our model, and I tried using a pastel card, that is kind of like sand paper. I want to use this type of surface for illustration except this one is a little rougher than I want, but I do like it better than paper. It holds more color, for more opaque contrasting color.

A New Project Begins…

Posted on by Tracy Bezesky

I have a new project to illustrate a picture book about one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” One of the great things about it is the profits all go to building a school in the Sudan village where the author is from.

These are small test illustrations, made for us to make some early design decisions. In this case, will the background be dark or light? It affects the layout and the text. The medium is pastel. The first is on Strathmore Brown Paper, the second Cream Paper.

The cream fails miserably, the first picture is richer and has more punch. This means there has to be light areas of the illustrations where the text can reside or a panel of white separated by a border.

Next I will make extremely rough sketches in order to fit them on the pages, ask questions about the people and places, and gather references where possible.

The gathering of information may cause a gap in posts for a bit, but I will be back as soon as possible, and share the process.