I love how this pastel drawing captures the ballet performance as well as the behind the scene stuff. You can clearly see the main dancer as the focal point and you can also see the other characters who are watching the performance from behind the stage.
From the technical perspective, capturing the soft pastel feel of this piece was very challenging. Particularly for the main dancer, the subtle value transition without a defined outline that creates the body body form shows Degas’ mastery of the medium.
In the retouching, I tried to capture the softness of the pastel while adding some contrast to make the overall image stronger.
Model: Olivia Aphrodite