Painting Expressive Pastel Portraits

Rating:
Summary: Mysteries revealed.
Review: Paul Leveille is truly a master of Pastel Portraiture. The book reveals many of the mysteries of properly building up a pastel painting to achieve a lifelike, realistic looking portrait. The book takes you through eight detailed portraits, start to finish. One drawback for me was, Paul does not give us a starting photograph of the subject, so during the stages it is difficult to know why the lights and darks, colors and shadows are placed where they are until you see the finished portrait. More a tutorial of techniques than a means of following along and copying his works step-by-step. Still, an excellent source of learning that will leave you able to create realistic portraits in pastel.

Rating:
Summary: Mysteries revealed.
Review: Paul Leveille is truly a master of Pastel Portraiture. The book reveals many of the mysteries of properly building up a pastel painting to achieve a lifelike, realistic looking portrait. The book takes you through eight detailed portraits, start to finish. One drawback for me was, Paul does not give us a starting photograph of the subject, so during the stages it is difficult to know why the lights and darks, colors and shadows are placed where they are until you see the finished portrait. More a tutorial of techniques than a means of following along and copying his works step-by-step. Still, an excellent source of learning that will leave you able to create realistic portraits in pastel.

Rating:
Summary: An ice--breaking resource.
Review: This great oversized book gives good illustrated step by step projects on portraiture pastel painting. It takes out the complications of starting a painting of someone. Though on a few projects some more steps could have been included, but this does not diminish the overall guidance the book provides. It has superb color and a well explanation of tools and materials, and how to take care of them. Composition, perspective and light is also explained for the rendition of your project.