Frustration with Faces

Last couple sessions with the portrait group I've been feeling very frustrated with my pastel sketches. I like pastels because their much faster when working from life but their also quite messy. Having lost my main boxes of portrait pastels I've had to resort to a jumble box of broken bits where you can't tell what color they are until you wipe them off. If you don't wipe them off real good you can wind up making a dark mark where you hoping for a light one.

So that's frustrating but sometimes I just feel like I'm not really getting the pose or likeness. Sometimes I don't care about the likeness as much as the feeling.

Last Friday we had one of my favorite models Cheyenne. A lovely beauty who reminds of an indian princess. Yet her peasant blouse put me in mind of a pretty senorita. So that is how I drew her. Here's two drawings from the same angle. Just approaching the lay in a bit different.

The one on the left is the first one with a more traditional drawing lay in. The one on the right I focused more on the color shapes avoiding any drawing till the end. I tried using blue and green mixed into the shadows to compliment all the lighter gold skin colors.