I decided to use this pastel painting as my study assignment piece. The topic was composition.

I wanted to use for a change my soft pastels which have traveled with me through multiple cities and homes way over a decade (or two) and they are still very much alive. Well, not walking, but usable.

The soft pastel set is a 45pcs ‘Landscape’ set by Rembrandt. Now I split some of the pastels I used and peeled the papers off from the other half. (I had not dared to mutilate them before)

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I’ve had in my mind a few tight cropped portraits and I mulled over one simple composition. I wanted a woman with her back to the right side of the paper, her facing the past, however, she has turned her head towards future. I positioned her to the left side of the page. I had a bit more tighter cropping in my sketched idea, but she shifted a bit more down and to right in the end.

I was thinking on rule of thirds for the positioning, her face being the focal point.

I did also aim to have her eyes as the most detailed and in focus part, but as said I originally was intending to have her head even higher and more to the left so I had other plans to tackle focus as well. I did leave some rough texture and colors to the bottom areas, but I mostly blended the edges and muted the colors a bit in background.

I wanted to use bold colors. With the woman being quite pale but also cold tinted and with strong blue and purple shades. Then background being bright and warm oranges. So two worlds colliding with complementary colors.