Hello!, I'm Steve
I’m an artist from Anglesey, North Wales. I love to create pastel portraits and paintings of pets and animals from photographs.
I use all types of pastels from powder, hard and soft sticks to soft and hard pencils for both opaque and transparency when layering and details. I also prefer subjects with both sharp (details) and bokeh (out-of-focus) elements as it gives a greater sense of depth.
The paper used is very important as painting a piece usually requires several layers to achieve the correct colour tones and depth.
My hair and fur work is created through fast strokes of sticks and pencils.
I delibrately don't think about copying from the reference material
but instead concentrate on form and the pressure on the pastel to the paper. This technique I find creates a more natural result.