MPS demo

I attended a meeting of the Maryland Pastel Society that advertised a demonstration by pastel artist Alain Pecard. I had seen an article in an old issue of The Pastel Journal that included pictures of some of his dog portraits and a landscape with a horse. Definitely interested in this artist's working method, I was looking forward to the demo. He painted a portrait of a young black lady that day. I am not a people portrait painter but I have to say it was the oddest portrait demo I ever saw. He fiddled and fooled around with everything but the woman's face, leaving a flat, mid-toned brown oval with no definition surrounded by colorful, completed passages. He seemed very apprehensive about painting the face. Finally, he tentatively layed in the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. Guess what? It didn't look like the model! I was disappointed.