How to draw pastel portraits in the style of Degas
Dupont Art Club instructor, Caroline Marsland used a reference photo of a young woman to demonstrate chalk pastel portrait using the linear layering technique used by Degas, who also influenced the work of Mary Cassatt.
After a brief look at their paintings and an appreciation of the use of colour and mark making, we were shown how to apply hatched marks to give soft, lost edges and thus capture spontaneity and the moment.
By building up layers of colour in the hatched marks, and often complementary colours side by side, the skin tones evolved from the lightest side through to the shadowed side of the face. None of the marks were blended but the optical effect produced lively and believable tones.
The final stage is to use more detailed and finer marks for the features. 
