This double pastel portrait is another Christmas commission which was quite a tricky composition. I did a number of sketches and played around with the images of the horse and pug on my computer, based on the photos supplied, before creating a pencil sketch to the right size on tracing paper. When all the workings were complete, I transferred this image onto Fisher 400 Pastel Paper. This is an extremely tough and ‘toothy’ pastel paper which can take paint as well as pastel. For the background I mixed up a variety of blue watercolour pigments and paynes grey and painted the background in a diagonal direction with plenty of water. I tried not to lose my original drawing but made sure the background overlapped onto the animals. Whilst the painting was still wet I applied soft pastel, sprayed it with water and let the pigments drip through at an angle to create a textured finish. This was left to dry before the blocking in process started. I have used a variety of Daler Rowney, Conte and Unison Pastel sticks for the base and then moved onto Faber Castell Pitt Pencils for the details. This is now being built in the final layers with fine flicks of pastel to show individual hairs and details on the coat.
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