When it comes to portraiture, I love soft pastels. Sure they can smudge if one is not careful, but they're not as bad as some think. I keep paintings stored between pieces of newsprint against the wall, and they're just fine. Shipping them requires a little more finesse (involving styrofoam boards, cardboard and tracing paper) but they arrive in excellent condition. Soft pastels have a gorgeous luminosity to them that I love.
Relatively recently, I started experimenting with digital media. I've worked with programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, of course, but this time I tried Corel's PainterX. Thrilled with my first essay into this new territory, I began to use it more, and now I paint most of my illustrations at least partially digitally. I first plan and sketch them out in pencil, and then they are transferred to the computer.
I've started working on a set of new illustrations for my portfolio. I was originally going to start with a sequence of images that tells a complete story (of how the stars came into the sky,) but since one of the illustrations is to accompany a recently finished picture book manuscript, it made sense to start with that one.
I've also got a whole set of fine art paintings I would like to start, using acrylic. We'll see how it goes...
