An Experimental Portrait – Kenobi

jofox9973

Jun 3

After seeing the beginning of Disney's Kenobi series I wanted to make a portrait of my hero. However, I am still feeling really unwell so I had a try at using pastels since they are really quick.

My plan was to draw with the pastels in the same way I would paint a digital or traditional oil portrait. I began with a map which is less of a sketch and more or a plan for highlights and shadows

Then I blocked in my base colours using my map...

(Poor Obi-Wan - he looks like a Sith Lord with a hangover at this stage!)

I used references of Obi-Wan from the Attack of the Clones film on my tablet. The thing I found most difficult was that I didn't have the colours or shades I needed. So I grabbed a piece of scrap paper and broke up various bits of pastels onto the paper so that I could mix them like paints. It was quite difficult and messy but it did work. I struggled with it though. I think I just didn't know the pastel colours as well as I do my paints and couldn't always guess exactly what I needed to get the exact hue I was looking for.

Here's my workspace, so you can see this process in action...

I completed the blocking in. Then reworked a lot of the colour. Then I used pastel pencils to finished the drawing off.

Here are the pastels and pencils I used on this project

Finally, I got it finished. It took longer than I expected (about an hour and a half) and my pain got quite severe by the end. While this didn't turn out as the portrait of my dreams I will show it to you anyway...