Greetings from Scotland
 

Hi, delighted to be here.
I'm a family physician in the beautiful North of Scotland. I reduced my hours of work last year and have rediscovered a passion for portraiture. So far the joys of pastels have me captive, I hope they'll act as a stepping stone to painting in oils.
Looking forward to the forums
Margaret

Margaret welcome, your subjects are lovely and your representation in color is vibrant and appealing. Visiting Scotland is on my wish list not just for the scenery but rather for its people.

Welcome!

Very nice work Margaret.
Welcome to the forum.

Margaret,

You've caught your subject's inner souls beautifully! Welcome to this Forum.

Garth

Interesting work, Margaret. Welcome to the forum. I have a brother in Edinburgh.

Thank you for your welcome. Thomasin, I was already familiar with your work. I admired it before joining, lovely and delicate.
Garth, thanks for the comment about inner souls, I'm trying increasingly to avoid being just a 'copyist'. looking forward to learning more from the diverse styles represented here.
Thank you also Claudia and Mischa, you should come and see us here, the scenery is unique!

I love all that color. Very beautiful!

I guess I will chime in on the visiting Scottland theme too. My husband is always pining to go. His lineage is Scottish - McCoy line. We even got an invitation to the Hatfield and McCoy reunion several years ago. LOL.

It's so nice to have you here!

I would love to see Scotland at some point in my life, as my McAndrew background is dear to me.

Hello Margaret,
Welcome to the forum.greetings to you from across the North Sea. Very nice work. I plan to start out in oils too.

Welcome, Margaret! I'm admiring the unique perspective and insight in your portrayal of these people. You do seem to describe their souls as well as their features. Even your technique contributes to the description. I'm looking forward to seeing more work by you.

Lovely portraits. However, you might want to take a look at the level of your jpg compression since your images have lost a lot of clarity. If you decrease the level of compression when you save the file, it will greatly increase the quality. You can't go backwards on this however - you can't resave the same image with less compression and regain quality. You'd have to rephotograph or rescan, depending on your original source material.

Loose style
 

Thank you for the comments, I've just been on a week's workshop with the master pastellist Ken Paine, really a life changing event. I hope to emulate his sensitive portrayal of his subjects.
I can't wait to get started!

Hello Margaret and welcome, beautiful pastels.

Feeling welcome!
 

Thank you for your comments; I'd love to hear how you get on Greth


Scotland is a fantastic country, very welcoming, it would be great to see some US artists over here!