Lena Painting Stage 1

This is the beginning of a portrait of my granddaughter, Lena. The portrait is being painted with pastels on paper. My process starts with a drawing on rather cheap paper (newsprint). If my corrections are destroying the paper, I may use a light table to trace the drawing onto a fresh piece of cheap paper where I continue to make corrections. Once I'm satisfied with the drawing, I'll again use my light table to trace the final drawing onto tracing paper. On the back side of the tracing paper, I cover just the lines with soft, white pastel. The tracing paper is laid on pastel paper and the lines are delicately traced in order to transfer the image to the pastel paper. If the lines are traced with too much pressure, the transferred lines are difficult to cover or erase during the painting process. I have to remember to trace with just enough pressure to transfer the line to the pastel paper. The white lines in the above "start" are traced from the tracing paper. Since errors and distortions occur in this tracing process, the white guidelines on the pastel paper have to be checked and corrected. If time permits, I'll show the progress of the painting in subsequent blogs.