Painting a Pronghorn in Soft Pastel and Pastel Pencils
Each year, I create a winter themed piece of artwork. This started because of my stepdad — he runs a small business and likes to use these to send custom holiday cards to all of his clients. This year, I felt really inspired by this pronghorn and the wintery snowflakes on its face and back!
I chose to create this piece using soft pastels and a small amount of pastel pencil for only the finest details. If you don’t already know my feelings about pastels, you can read about how pastels won me over in a prior post. I felt the soft pastels would be perfect for creating the snowflakes and would generally be great for capturing the vibrancy in the pronghorn’s coat. If I did the piece again, I might choose to do the same, but draw it a bit larger than I did as it was a challenge at times due to the size (it is 11”x14” in total). The pronghorn in my reference photo has surprisingly coarse looking fur along the snout/bridge of its nose — I’m not sure if this is typical as many photos I’ve seen show very short fur along that area — but it almost created these chunks of fur rather than soft fuzz or wispy hairs.
For the soft pastels, I mainly used Unison Colour with a small amount of Rembrandt as well. In my experience, the Rembrandts are a harder pastel when compared to the Unisons. The Unisons have a very buttery feel to them and they go on the page brilliantly, but you do have to be careful not to use up the tooth of the paper too quickly with them. I sometimes like to use the Rembrandts for base layers (because then I won’t risk filling up the tooth of the paper) with the Unisons on top for detail, but in this case, I sort of just selected pastels based on the colors I wanted. I have the Natural Earth range from Unison and for this piece, those colors were exactly what I needed along with the occasional pop of brighter orange from the Rembrandts.
One of my favorite parts of this piece was applying soft pastel to create the snowflakes on the pronghorn’s back and face. It might be surprising, but I didn’t use any pure white in creating these snowflakes! I actually used a variety of violet tones in varying values (meaning some were light, some were more mid-toned). This was important as the snowflakes would look very flat if I only applied pure white pastel. The variation in violet tones creates some shadowed areas and gives a more realistic look to the snow itself. I used a yellow ochre pastel pencil to add some shape around the snowflakes, particularly to one where the shape given by the soft pastel looked a little bit unrealistic.
I learned a few things about pronghorns while doing this piece. First off, in case you didn’t know, pronghorns are unique to North America! While many people refer to them as antelope, they are actually not antelope at all. Their closest living relatives include the giraffe and okapi. Second, they are the fastest land mammal in North America! One thing I didn’t realize was that pronghorns were nearly wiped out by the 1920s due to increased pressure from hunting. They ended up being saved, in large part, by a the Boone + Crockett Club (one of the first hunting and conservation clubs in America) along with the National Audubon Society. These organizations helped to get regulations in place to protect the pronghorn, to protect their habitat, and to purchase and designate a large plot of land as a pronghorn refuge. It’s an amazing comeback story and today, pronghorns are doing well overall.
For me, it just so happens that my elementary school mascot was the pronghorn and I live in an area where pronghorns can be seen regularly, so this just felt like a very appropriate piece to add to my collection. You can find pronghorn prints and cards available at the links below:
“Velocity” Limited Edition Prints available in two sizes
Custom 8 Card Set (select your cards once you add this to your cart!)
Custom 16 Card Set (select your cards once you add this to your cart!)
Make sure to catch me at these upcoming holiday markets!
Holiday Artisan Market at the Fort Collins Senior Center, Friday and Saturday, November 29-30 from 10am-4pm. Free admission! Find my booth in the gym along one of the walls! 1200 Raintree Drive, Fort Collins, CO 80526
Colorado Makers Market at Northside Aztlan Community Center, Sunday, December 8 from 12-5pm. Free admission! Find my booth in the gym along one of the walls! 112 E Willow Street, Fort Collins, CO 80524