The following are the steps before completing my latest pastel.  It is a 9 X 12 on La Carte Pastel Card using mostly Unisons.   This is the first pastel I’ve done on any surface besides Canson and watercolor paper.  I think I have found a new friend….it was a lot of fun working on this surface!

I enlarged a photo of Shatze and taped it to the top of my table easel.  I know a lot of people use their computer screens. Perhaps that will be the next step I take.   Anyway, here is the drawing done in a reddish brown  Nupastel.

I don’t usually do the background first, but when I saw how brilliant the colors were showing on this paper (card?), I felt better about working on the cat with some area of comparison.  I didn’t want the background to over-power the cat, but I still wanted to include the delightful colors in the what I think is a blanket over the back of the couch.

I was fairly happy with the face at this stage, although later I could tell I had painted the nose just a bit too long and so corrected it by scraping off pastel and repainting.  But that wasn’t until the rest of the picture was completed.   I’m sure we all go in and make “corrections” after we’ve covered the surface.  But, I think that faces on people and animals are of primary importance. If the face isn’t right, it’s not the right cat!

I think this is where I discovered the nose, plus a few little picky items to correct.

And here I call it done.   (Unless something else jumps out at me after letting it rest a day or two.

Enjoy!