Pastel portrait, and my first post.

[Garth Herrick]

James,

This is excellent. It's a handsome, compelling portrait. Your commanding draftsmanship and orchestration and descriptive management of the tonal values is brilliant.

If you don't wish to complete the shirt to an equal level of finish to the rest, I would suggest at least adding another couple of inches of definition, tapering off to the bottom, since right now the shirt segment andthe face segment feel to be about equal in height, and it may be stronger if the shirt grew to help support the head above.

I am concerned about the dark values blocking up into one cohesive mass, but I realize this may be merely too much contrast in your post image. Is there more variety and shadow detail in the dark areas?

Thanks for posting this and introducing yourself. Welcome to the Forum!

Garth