Beginning of a Pastel Painting of a Leprechaun, by L.A. Cline, Master Pastel Artist
Street performers have always been a group of people whom I admire. They go out day after day, put their best face forward and show their natural talents. It takes a very special person to recreate themselves in this light to perform a unique live show in front of an audience. As a dedication to street performers, I wanted to create my own idea of the Leprechaun character performer I saw in my travels within a pastel painting. He went from every street corner singing, dancing and putting a smile on every member of the audience’s face.
When I create a pastel painting, I always research all the information I can surrounding the topic. The more information I have the more exciting the painting will be. This enables me to give the pastel painting a breath of life. For this particular painting, I researched the legends and images of Leprechauns so I can develop my own personal vision of this Leprechaun character. The information I found inspired me to depict a certain style of Leprechaun. Knowing even the smallest fact, gave inspiration into my artistic liberty to enhance the pastel painting with details like the Leprechaun’s face, costume and the neighboring surroundings.
To ensure my work stays in optimal quality after it is originally painted, I work on heavy acid-free paper mounted on an acid-free foam core. The method I use for this portrait painting is an application of different pastel color layers that build each layer until I will reach the intense green color I want for the Leprechaun’s costume. I feel that the liveliness of the green in the Leprechaun’s costume will communicate his present, outgoing personality very clearly. Onlookers will still see the slight bits of white paper through the colors, however once the work is finished one would never know I started with a white background. I will be applying over 20 or more layers of pastel art colors to achieve the intensity for the image and color desired. A pastel portrait painting, such as this one, will take about 10-12 weeks to be a finished masterpiece. I am several weeks out from completion.
This pastel painting will be an addition to my Entertainment series of fine art pastel paintings. After I finish this original pastel painting it will be scanned to enable the reproduction of beautiful Fine Art Giclee Art Reproductions. Upon completion, these will be available in my fine art store. This channel shows all of the fine art works in my Sports/Entertainment section.
Stay tuned as this painting progresses. I will be showing more completed pastel portrait images of the infamous Leprechaun in the weeks to come!
Written by: Master Pastel Artist, L.A. Cline, L.A.C. Fine Art
Part 2: Lucky Leprechaun
Part 3: Lucky Leprechaun