How to fix a pastel painting mistake

Saint Bernard in Soft Pastel

While painting this gorgeous Saint Bernard, I decided that the foreground needed to change. I had started painting it in a realistic way, but I wasn’t really committed to it and so it turned out looking a bit strange. I”ll show you how easy it is to change your mind during a pastel painting.

As always aI started with a line drawing. This one was fairly loose. I used a bigger grid as a guide, and loosely sketched in his shape.

I used a grid because when the image is so close up, there is little room for error on the important parts of the dog, like his big nose, and I wanted to make sure it’s all correct before starting.

After the drawing was done, I did the background, mainly with pan pastels in Payne’s Grey, Neutral Grey and Ultra Marine Blue Tint.

I thought I wanted to do the grasses realistically, but halfway through I decided I wasn’t feeling it. It wasn’t looking the way I wanted it to, and I kept having this idea that a loose, softer grass would be better.

Even though I had already started on the leg, I used a soft kneaded eraser, I removed as much of the pastel as I could. Some traces of the old grass remained, but it didn’t matter. The soft pastels will easily cover it up.

Then I used a variety of Rembrandt and Art Spectrum soft pastel sticks to very loosely block in the foreground. There was no method to this - just a variety of greens, yellows and abit of dark here and there for depth. The yellow I used to indicate some buttercups or dandelions.

When I was happier with the grass area, I added some more ayers inwhite and grey to the leg sticking out on the left. I moved on to the nose, using black, sepia, ultra marine blue and lighter greys to work on the nose.

I’ll go back into the nose later, when the fur around it is done, to make adjustments.

I continued on down the muzzle, including the little pink tongue. Even without his eye painted in yet, he already looks super cute! It’s that schnoop:-)

I used the same colours in the muzzle as in the nose, with the addition of a soft purplish colour (Carbothello 642).

Next, the eye. I could have worked up her forehead if I wanted to instead of jumping to the eye. It doesn’t matter.

Once the eye was done, I blocked in the rest of the fur in very light layers. I focussed on showing myself where the lighter bits and the darker bits are, but because these are just the initial layers, getting the exact colour right isn’t important. Just something dark, something light and white/light grey for the white bit.

That’s the thing about pastels - you can be relaxed as you work your way slowly, layer by layer, toward the correct colour.

After many more layers in black, brown, some reddish colours (Carbothello 675 and 670) some ochre and light yellows, he is finally done.

I put a few layers of colours, darks and lights, then blendsoftly with my finger, before adding more layers in darks and light. This layering up of darks and lights, and moving back and forth between them, creates a beautiful fluffy look.

Lastly, I greyed out the background a bit more, because I felt the blue was a bit too vibrant for the green. Two vibrant colours can make it look more like a storybook illustration.

I hope this short blog tutorial showed you how easy it is to correct mistakes in pastels, and to change your mind if you need to. I’ve made heaps of mistakes in my paintings, and I always manage to fix them one way or another. Adding more layers, removing some…. pastels are very forgiving, so if fear of making a mistake holds you back, then just go for it. Fix as you go:-)