My self portrait is complete. I've been fighting with the scan on this one. I now remember why I liked pastels over pencils- pencils for me don't scan well. Something about how the scanner scans and shines light on the pencils. Personally I love this piece when viewing it in real life. The scan is pretty good after digital tweaking, but still nothing beats viewing the real thing.
Check out the process of this here.
What I love about this technique is that it's easy and simple. With pastels it requires much more of a prep. I can't work too small with pastels, I must have it taped down with frisket film (via the technique I use with pastels), cutting the frisket and using the pastels. The pastels are messy. They get the hands dirty and create dust. Honestly it doesn't bother me that much, but with pencils you can just pick it up for two seconds and stop and move on to something else if need be. You can't just pick up and work on pastels like that without getting dirty.
I think the pencil technique is something I needed right now. A way to create wonderful art without a lot of hassle on the side. But it's sad it simply does not scan well. Even my previous piece, the Nimue's Lamnet one, didn't scan the best it could of been. Both these pieces look so much better in person. I love the way this technique looks when finished but I just can't get the same results to transfer to a digital copy. A complete and utter shame.
The question is do I continue on with this process for a bit? Or perhaps look into going back to pastels? Well regardless I do plan on doing a charcoal piece in the future anyways, so that will give me time to think things over.
