First pastels

[sundiver]

Welcome to the grubby-fingers world of pastels! These are very nice first pieces.
There are tons of very good pastel demos available online, which you may find helpful or inspiring.

(I love hostas but can't grow them at my house because the deer eat them right down to the ground!)

 

[Hipkit]

Before oil pastels, I used Conte Crayons. These are hard pastels which I have in both pencils and chalks. I also have compressed charcoal and used to have fun using a limited palette of black, white, pale blue and orange. With a cat reference, I'd start by drawing the lightest and darkest areas first (on a mid-toned paper) then drawing the warmest and coolest areas. After this, a little blending with a stump or finger, then a quick spray with cheap hairspray, (couldn't afford fixative at that time.)

This helped with learning values and was also a quick, fun way of producing a rough cat portrait.
Later, using acrylic or oil pastel - but you could do this with chalkies - I used black and white references from a very old book about cats, but translated the images into colour, almost as though I could "see" the colours in the black and white photos.

You might find it useful to use similar techniques.

 

[Sanddedcz]

Beautiful ! my preference goes for the first one. very dynamic, and great colors !

 

[Donna T]

You are off to a great start with pastels! I like to use Polychromos by Faber Castell to get paintings started. They are harder pastels but great for sketching and blocking in big shapes, especially on sanded paper that can easily eat up the softest pastels. Have fun experimenting and trying new techniques as you go along!

 

[Hostajunkie]

Thanks, everyone. I tried a sort of plein air (looking out the window pastel the other day and learned all kinds of new things… like never get it wet, and don’t spray your fixative too close, for example. Lol!

 

[Bartc]

Don't get lost in details! Much great art is not grounded in a lot of fine details - Impressionism being the most popular example - and even Da Vinci had a way of suggesting detail that he actually didn't paint. Getting lost in photo-realistic details is painful and not necessarily productive.
You have a very good start here and we're all encouraging you to keep going.
In soft pastel work you most often don't put in much detail, you suggest it. That's a matter of learning techniques. I suggest you watch some videos from Karen Margules and Marla Bagetta on YouTube to learn how.
BTW, only the sharp edge of a soft pastel would make details stand out in such a small size painting. But using a hard pastel or semi-hard (like Nupastels) would give you that "edge" for edges. Nupastels mix well with soft pastels as detail finishers as well as for starting an underpainting or drawing.
If you are truly into a lot of detailed drawing, then either pastel pencils or Nupastels might be your thing. If you are into the soft pastel category, then mixing in pastel pencils has never worked for me with those.