Every Day Original: Pan

4x6 chalk pastel on BFK RIves paper. Available on May 10th at EveryDayOriginal.com. Check out my Newsletter for the price and frame dimension details.

This was a good challenge for me. I normally like doing portraits with dark hair, because the face is framed nicely with all that dark contrast. With this one I really had to control the values of the skin. I also wanted to have Peter Pan dirty since he was such a wild child, which adds more to the challenge for the skin tone. The old black and white 1954 film Lord of the Flies was very helpful reference for that dirty mud child look. You may also notice that Peter's eye seems to be brighter than the rest of the illustration. With my greyscale pastels, I usually prefer to use cold grey colors. However, with the pupil I used a warm light grey to give it some extra life.

"To die would be an awfully big adventure."

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