Feedback on Paul's Dolphin Pastel Pencil Picture

One our members Paul sent in his picture of the Dolphin project which is available inside our membership. As a member Paul can send in his work for advice and feedback. Here's Paul's picture and Colin's advice on any improvements he would suggest.

Listen to Colin's feedback or read the transcription below:

Hi Paul Steve has sent this picture of the dolphin on to me and I'm gonna say straight away you've done a really good job of it. I totally agree with you on the sky and that looks great and the water as well which is tricky anyway particularly the splash. I think you've done really well. The dolphin itself isn't too bad except it's a little dark and the reason for that is that whenever you're doing anything like this now I'm not a great lover of the mi-teintes paper so I can't really speak with authority about how it would react. I can only go on the ingres and the pastelmat but what it looks like you've done is you haven't put quite so much of the base colours on you know the greys and so on. The dark colours - the black that has been used and the 181 that would have been used if it goes on a surface which hasn't got sufficient base colour you tend to get that black look.I wouldn't worry about that and I certainly wouldn't change it. Leave it as it is but my job is really to help you in the next picture you know or subsequent pictures and I would say that is something that you should need to look at. You could try what I'm talking about on spare paper especially if you've got some mi-teintes paper try just a section of that again. Do the fin or one of the flippers and try to do as I suggested put more base colour 233 I think I use as a start there. See when you've got a lighter base colour when the darker colours - the 181 and the black go on you get a really intense colour. Now sometimes that's great if that's what you want but in this case it is a bit unnatural looking. So that's what I would suggest have a go.Do what I suggested try on spare paper and then put your example that you've just done against this picture and see how it compares. If it's still the same then try again until you get that sort of happy balance. I hope that helps but I've got to tell you once again I think that's really one of the best I've seen. Well done.