You’ve already discovered the joy of soft pastels - now it’s time to refine your techniques, explore new subjects, and create with confidence.
£15 / month or £150 for the whole year
The Hub is for you if you've been following tutorials but you feel you need and want something extra, perhaps to bridge that gap to going it alone with your own art, or you just need to dial in a bit deeper to understand things better or you're struggling with colour....If you've gone past feeling like you're a complete beginner and want to learn more.
✔ Refine & Expand Your Skills: Targeted tutorials and exercises to help you sharpen your techniques and tackle new challenges.
✔ Learn from an Expert: Get guidance from a professional soft pastel artist and experienced teacher who knows how to help you progress.
✔ Stay Inspired: Enjoy fresh project ideas, live sessions, and a community that encourages and supports your creative journey.
✔ Flexible Learning: Access lessons anytime—no pressure, no deadlines, just consistent growth at your own pace.
✨ Concise Tutorials & Exercises – Focused lessons on advanced techniques like layering, textures, and creating realistic details.
✨ Live Art Club Sessions – Interactive Zoom workshops four times a month (with recordings) for real-time guidance and feedback.
✨ Specialised Skill Modules – Deep dives into topics like colour mastery, animal fur, backgrounds, and more.
✨ Community & Support – Connect with fellow pastel enthusiasts who understand your creative journey.
Includes whiskers, tricky fur types, noses, eyes, accessories like collars and clips, tricky areas like gums.
Includes water, clouds, rocks, sand and grass
Learn simple techniques to create complex textures, fabrics and backgrounds
Learn about colour with quizzes, colour exercises, photography tasks. The more you learn, practice and play with colour, the easier it is to make better colour choices for your own paintings.
Learn graphic computer skills with simple free software that you can use on your tablet/phone to make your art your own.
Learn what a professional artist does behind the scenes.
Learn and improve your techniques with sticks, pencils and pans and learn about pastel papers.
Learn how to beat Imposter Syndrome
Get support with your art and join a wonderful community to share your art journey with. And enjoy exclusive offers on my tutorial site.
Hello, I'm Sue Kerrigan-Harris, it's nice to meet you!
I am a professional soft pastel artist, qualified teacher and coach.
Unison Pastel Associate Artist.
Founder of the Soft Pastel Skills Hub.
Teacher to over 1000 students world-wide
My proven teaching style boosts your confidence as well as your soft pastel skills. The HUB is my membership program to help you be the best artist you can be.
Also Included in the Soft Pastel Skills Hub:
Art Club is £10/month but it's included in the Hub membership free!
LIVE & RECORDED WITH A LIBRARY OF OVER 70 PREVIOUS TUTORIALS
Art Club is approx 1 hour 4 x Tuesdays per month, we focus on drawing and pastel skills with weekly and monthly projects.
Learn how to draw freehand, using shapes,with full and partial grids and tracing (like an expert).
Short weekly projects to help you with motivation and improve your pastel skills.
Monthly projects where we draw then pastel a complete pastel painting together.
The Hub gives you the confidence to go ahead with your own paintings, to grow and be the best artist you can be.
Let's say for example, you're about to add whiskers to your pastel painting but you know they are really hard to do and you need a confidence boost to get you going. Login to the Hub, click Subject Focus: Whiskers. View the introduction and choose a whiskers tutorial that's relevant to your subject (e.g. leopard, cat or squirrel) With confidence boosted, you're back at your easel adding those whiskers and finishing your painting!
If you want to get past copying photos and want to create your own art.
You feel like your art is missing something but you don't know what's missing.
You're okay when you get given a list of colours to use but selecting your own colours is hard.
You want distraction free, focused learning with concise video based tutorials and LIVE weekly support.
Improve or learn new skills, give yourself a refresh or build your confidence.
You want to really focus and dial in on subjects you're having issues and improve.
The Hub is a direct result of students asking me very specific questions, like:
❓ How do I create my own art?
❓ I'm frustrated, I can't remember how to do whiskers!!
❓ How do I do backgrounds?
❓ Which colours should I use?
❓ I'm no good with a computer how do I start?
❓ How can I learn to draw?
But It's more than concise tutorials:
✔ It's concise tutorials
✔ It's 2 way communication (where you can ask specific questions for each tutorial)
✔ It's a library (that you can easily access, any time)
✔ It's a community space where you are safe to share your art, ask questions and get help.
AND
✔ It's distraction free learning (where you don't get interrupted by incessant adverts)
✔ It's frustration free (you'll find what you're looking for quickly)
"The Hub is really good and I have always enjoyed every moment that I’ve spent learning from Sue. You’re a wonderful teacher and have given me so much confidence, teaching me from scratch."
"You will absolutely love what Sue has to offer via the Hub! It has an amazing range of bitesize tutorials that cover pastelling skills and techniques such as backgrounds, whiskers, using apps to help with composition, colour, and many more! It's incredibly good value for money and for me it's like having Sue on speed dial!"
"I love the HUB. It contains so much information about pastelling, and it is great to dip into it, whether to read all about a subject or to find out how to fix a problem with your current painting."
"After watching the Warm Grey Colour Tutorial I realized that I do not know much about colour. We see colour every day but don’t really look at it.
The backgrounds have also been so good. You never know how and what to do with them. So, putting the computer skills together with the backgrounds you learn so much to better the hard work that goes into doing a picture.
I think the biggest thing with the hub though is that it keeps you motivated.
When you are battling you sometimes just want to give up. Knowing that there is a place you can go to learn keeps you going and adds a lot of enjoyment to what you are doing."
"The HUB is incredible. It has so much information, and specific techniques that will definitely help you on your art journey, and Sue is adding to, and growing the HUB constantly. It’s great value for money and Sue encourages us to say what we want to see in it. It is interactive including polite and useful critiques of your work, if you want that. You can post work and ask questions on specific topics. I recommend you sign up and see for yourself how wonderful and useful it is. You’ll love it…"
"I have been a Hub member for over a year now and I find it very useful, especially the different skills I have been improving while under Sue's tutorship. Sue breaks the process of creating beautiful paintings down in a simple and supportive way. There is a lot of support from other members too and it is a place to give and receive support. Sue provides very detailed videos on how to make complicated techniques seem simple."
"Sue is one fantastic tutor I've wanted to draw all my life but knew I couldn't then last year Sue popped up on my Facebook with the Bengal kitten in the unison challenge my hubby encouraged me to have a go at it. Sue made it so easy for me explaining what she was doing and why she was doing it. I had watched a lot of artists on utube but no one explained it how Sue does needless to say at the age of 65 i finally learnt to draw thank you Sue for everything you do for your students and unison for your amazing pastels."
"Sue is the BEST person EVER! Sue introduced me to soft pastels and art! She gave me me the confidence to ‘have a go’ despite doubting my self.
I’ve not looked back since meeting her at her house during Hampshire Art Open Days in 2019.
I now have a dedicated room to producing art. I just wish I had more time but my life is much richer, colourful since that day I met up with Sue. Such a joy to be part of her journey…… and the Hub is amazing!"
"I'm not great with the techy stuff but I find the Hub easy to navigate. The Hub allows me to keep up with progress at a time to suit me as I cannot always guarantee to join the Live feed.
The Hub is now so full of content we are really spoiled for choice in what to do next. So many hint tips and direction that I’ve learned so much but still find myself playing the recordings to refresh my learning.
It's like having my own personal Tutor on speed-dial .. for which I cannot thank you enough. I particularly like the split format for a larger topic spreading the art over several weeks . It makes the whole process much more enjoyable for me and gives me confidence when I do finally finish a piece to post on line.
The Hub is now a lovely group of supportive members and I do hope it may continue for a long time. Thank you Sue xxx"
The Hub gives you the confidence to go ahead with your own paintings, to grow and be the best artist you can be.
Denise Baker, a founding member, talking about her experience of the Hub so far.
Kay having a lovely chat with me about her experience using the Hub.
Member Olive Dodd, talking about her experience of the Hub so far.
The Hub gives you the confidence to go ahead with your own paintings, to grow and be the best artist you can be.
For membership subscriptions, please use your debit or credit card. PayPal is not available for memberships at this time. As soon as it becomes available, it will be added. If you're really stuck and can only use PayPal, contact Sue here: sue@skhportraits.co.uk
To cancel your membership, click settings, in the top right menu, scroll down to billing. Select Edit next to Community and then select change plan or cancel plan.
Yes. This is a complete new website with the bells and whistles of a membership and community space. It was not possible to link your www.skhportraits.co.uk account to this one.
If you've never used soft pastel before, you'll want to start with my beginners course here. The Hub is not for complete beginners with no prior knowledge. Do my beginners course first and get some step by step practice under your belt, then join the Hub.
In the Hub Community section click All Topics on the left or from the Home drop down menu. Select Art Club LIVE Support and you'll see the link to join and the dates and times. You can also submit questions and watch the recording.
Each month new resources will be added to The Hub and you can join the Art Club on Zoom. This is also recorded to watch later. You'll get an email when anything new is added.
I like your thinking :) The reason it is only £15 a month (even though it is worth £35 a month) is threefold....
We are currently in a financial crisis and therefore I have held the price at £15. This is the lowest I can make it without it being unviable as a business.
For most people art is a hobby and £15 a month to learn a hobby to a professional standard gives you exceptional value.
I don't want money to be a barrier to you learning a hobby and a skill that could quite literally change your life and give you joy every day you do it.
The Hub gives you the confidence to go ahead with your own paintings, to grow and be the best artist you can be.