I’ve been struggling to get muted colors from my soft pastels. I asked for advice over at wetcanvas.com and was told that I should try some harder pastels. Good news that I got some NuPastels for Christmas, so I could try this out.

I’m fairly pleased with how easily these colors blend, but I have a long way to go figuring out what works best in each situation.

This piece is only 6×6 inches, and even with the harder pastels, it was still tricky to get a nice sharp edge on sanded paper. More work to do there, too.

One last note: this painting was done from life (a departure from my earlier pastels which were done from photographs). I built a shadow box this weekend from black foam core, and lit the setup with a small clip-on lamp and a daylight bulb.