Day 15, Pastels

Onions in Pastel, Conte and Stablio Pencils on Craft Paper
Image size is 6" x 9"

In an ideal world, I would love working with pastels, especially pastel pencils. They blend, they layer, you can go darker, you can go lighter, you can erase, you can change your mind, you can build up colors. The colors themselves are rich and vibrant, but with varying pressure, you can change that too. You can be subtle. I love the nice grab and scritch on the paper.

However, with these pencils, I spent as much, if not more time whittling them down as I did drawing. A lot of carving with an Exacto blade, often to find the freshly exposed color crumbling as I carved. Yuck! Maybe they are too old, and that's why they are so brittle. Maybe I need a lighter touch, or a sharper blade. But for whatever reason, as much as I love the effects, the frustration may make them NOT worth it.