Suitability of pastel

Pastel is an opaque medium, which renders darker subjects well. It is normally used with a coloured, and slightly textured paper. The paper needs to have a "tooth" to help the pigment grab, but this tends to restrict the ability to record very fine details. Pastel is most suitable for larger artwork (A3 and above) as this makes it easier to capture detail in the picture. It is more difficult to reproduce colours exactly using pastel, because pigments cannot be mixed like paints.

A pastel "painting" is one in which all of the paper is painted. A pastel "sketch" allows the paper to provide a background.

Further details and more example portraits can be found on my main web site:

http://www.portraits.srv2.com.