Starting with some warm-up play in a sketchbook on a page that had some acrylic paint from a previous session as a ground, I played with this high-contrast reference and some charcoal powder.
Having smudged in some basic shadow areas, I wanted a darker dark, so I mixed the charcoal powder with clear gesso, and if you haven’t tried this, I recommend it.
I have a few pan pastels that I never use, so I pulled out the white one to smudge on the highlights, and then played around with a few mid-tones.
This was a lot of fun, so I went a similar route in my big sketchbook that is my hands and feet book.
Starting with a ground in Indian Red acrylic, I then used a very similar colour in the pan pastel to smudge in the basic shapes. This is very forgiving, if you are itching to try figures but not quite getting to the page.
Once the barely-there shapes were down I used a white pan pastel to pull out some highlights, and then the charcoal and clear gesso to work in the darkest darks.
This was a lot of fun with supplies that I don’t use often enough.
The charcoal won’t need sealing, but the pan pastels will, so naturally I chose a rainy day for this, because that’s how I roll.
Til the morn,
Suzanne
588/600
Thrummie Bizzum 
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