Hello, I'm Crystal Cook welcome to my blog! I'm a full time mother of three and part time artist, whenever I can fit it in. I specialize in portraits of children in watercolor, but also use pastel, charcoal and colored pencil. I just finished this pastel in black and white and was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I was very drawn to the child's concentrated expression along with those full cheeks and lashes. But the thing that inspired me the most was the strong back light that framed that sweet face and caught the soft hair that only babies have. This was a fun piece to do, usually I work in watercolor which requires me to plan more in advance and usually takes me a while to finish. But this time I just sketched it out fairly quickly and tried to be as expressive as I could with my marks while still capturing a likeness. I think I need to break out the pastels more often it helped me get out of a rut I was in and inspired more creativity in me. Who knew a few little sticks of powdered pigment could bring such a change in my perspective?