Pastel Yellow

Yesterday i bought some nice new pastels - four yellow ones this time. I don't know why but when I decide to try out new pastels I always seem to end up doing circles of colour and blending. So here it is yellow for Project Spectrum's air. I have found this hard because air is hard to reproduce pictorially as you can't see it and yellow isn't my most favourite colour....

Metalliferous Earth

I also got some lovely metallic oil pastels - the sort you buy one by one and try not to let yourself pick up too many colours at a time.....

I had a little play this morning and drew spirals which I then blended. I kept adding to highlight the colours I wanted in each part of the picture. It has a lovely soft but sparkly earthy feel...

I have to say these more expensive pastels are much smoother to use than the cheap nasty ones I have a pack of. I can see more colours creeping home....

Postcards One and Two

These two postcards were created using a small set of hard and chalky pastels. The circles were drawn with compasses and then outlined in fineline pens. I found that using my finger to make the pastel even was not very effective and left blurred colours so I used a small paint brush which helped a lot. It is also a lot easier to blend colours if you do not press too hard. I was disappointed that my red and pinky-red pastels looked so similar.