‘Tiny Dancer,’ 18 X 24 pastel on paper board, by Carol Lois Haywood

This pastel painting of Katherine, in large format and as a cropped figure, was a 2013 example–of the direction my art is taking now, seen in the Silver & Smoke series. Treating a figure more like a landscape, less of a likeness, has become obvious this year. The move to charcoal and graphite also sharpens the departure from past interests. But my bold cropping of this figure showed the way to later developments, I think.

I had not yet found premium sanded board as my support for pastel painting here. So the background seems rather rough and primitive contrasted with the figure herself. On her, I developed several layers of color (as I later began to do all over). I chose pastel pencil as my basic medium immediately for its adhesive qualities.

Sanded board provided me the…