This morning I decided to stop crying and whining about the mistakes and problems with this piece. Instead, I was determined to find its strong points and work on enhancing those.
So I worked more on the cat. I think he's pretty well drawn and felt that if I could strengthen him more, increase the value range, and add a little color to harmonize with the background that it might get better.
I noticed that Aslan in real life has a much darker back than I had given him, so I decided to darken his back in the drawing, hoping that a darker back would lessen the impact of the too-dark shadow under him. I worked mostly with hard pastel - very little pastel pencil - then added some soft pastel which really began to bring up the color.
After I took this photo I decded that the shadow under him is REALLY TOO DARK. I tried to add lighter pastel over it but that didn't work, so I got out a paper towel and rubbed off a lot of the pastel in the shadow, ready to re-work that area. Of course in the process I removed the lower edge of the fringes of fur so I'll have to re-do that too which will be a little tricky.
At this point I can say that I am truly a fan of the Pastelmat paper, despite my problems with glazes. I will definitely use it again.
I think this piece will make a nice greeting card, and I may even crop it pretty severely to leave not much more than the head, upper chest, front paws, and mouse.
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