Camren's bad hair day

[paprika]

Hi all,
This is Camren. I'm having a really hard time getting his hair right. It's a medium brown with gold and red high-lights. Anyone have any insight on how to do this? It's done in soft pastels on paper.
Thanks!

[jocelynsart]

Hi Paprika: Usually, it works if you start the hair with red as the base tone, then you can neutralize towards browns and add golds where needed, leaving the very lights as mostly the paper. Here, you may have to remove some of the browns with a soft eraser and add some strawberry red tones if you can. I find working from the red tone first then into the browns works best for me.
Jocelyn

[peoplepainter]

Paprika,
What an adorable pastel! Joc has great ideas. You might also try finding slgihtly softer pastels which will allow you to lay lighter color over darker. I have pretty good success putting lights over darks this way.
Really nice work!

Lisa

[paprika]

Thanks, Lisa. The opinion of someone with your talents really means something.
jocelynsart - I did what you suggested, and it looks better. Not great, but better. I ordered a set of Rembrant soft pastels from Dick Blick the other day, along with some pastel board, so hopefully that will make future portraits look a little better. This is only the 5th pastel I've ever done, and they do seem to be improving as I go along. But....still a long way to go.
Thanks for the comments.