Pastels have a sneaky charm. At first you assume it is just a humble stick of chalk, and three hours later the kitchen table, the floor, and your shirt are dusted with a cloud of color you never imagined creating. That is what is happening with this medium. The Tingology It is quick, pardons slowly, and teaches you more of your instincts than any other form of art is likely to teach you.
A good pastel course will not overprotect you. Week one, you are being taught what the tooth (the feel of your paper) does to each and every stroke. Week two, you are wearing colors which are not supposed to go, yet they do. Honestly it can feel like a cheerful kind of chaos. You begin with humble exercises in light and dark — dull, it is, but those practice is gradually getting the groundwork laid, on which your pictures will not rest flat.
Curiously, the best and worst habit beginners learn is finger blending, something no one mentions at the start. Teachers will tell them to use a tortillion. You'll nod. Then just give your thumb a vote. And sometimes? it works exactly as needed. Pastels simply encourage experimentation in ways that more rigid mediums rarely allow.
One of them once referred to her pastel course experience as learning to drive a stick shift, it was so frightening, embarrassing and then just clicking to make everything seem to go slow. That is quite a realistic description. The learning curve can sting at first, yet the slow periods rarely last long. The improvement can be seen, nearly week by week.
The handling of color theory is what often distinguishes an ordinary course from an exceptional one. It goes beyond warm and cool basics; even a tiny shift of violet in a shadow can transform the entire painting. Keep your instructor should he or she be in love with that stuff, the reason behind color choices. Understanding color naturally leads to deeper curiosity.