In this excerpt from the book, we'll meet back up with Pamela Wells and explore her techniques for soft pastel work. We'll * shoot photos; * build a rough composite in Photoshop to use for reference; * paint with Pastels in Painter.

PAMELA WELLS USED PHOTOSHOP AND PAINTER to create Sun, which is a member in her series of works inspired by Tarot cards, saying : "The Sun card represents happiness, contentment and joyful living."

She built a composite to use for reference, and then working in Painter, she created a colorful illustration that has the look of blended pastel.

1 Shooting photos. Wells set up her model, the flowers and other elements using a white background; then, she photographed them with a digital camera.

2 Building a composite. To begin the illustration, Wells built a composite that included several elements. She made masks for the images in Photoshop using the Lasso tool, and then she dragged and dropped the elements into a composite file.

Wells could have brought a layered Photoshop file into Painter with layers, but she wanted a flat document with all of the elements merged together.

NEXT STEP: Tracing, sketching and coloring

... continues on the next page!