r/Softpastel

I think this one turned out better. Strayed from the reference pic a bit and added some flowers in the front.

Also used a lighter touch (which I thought I did before but tried even lighter today) and it produced much less dust (second pic). As you can see in the third pic it is literally piled up with dust, but this time I much better.

I also applied water and use a paintbrush to make an underpainting, rather than just blending for the underpainting

The sky was difficult as it was hard to get a nice mix between blended enough but still with a slight texture

I very recently found the joys of using pastels. This time last year I wouldn’t have touched pastels, not my kinda thing, but had an eye operation at the end of 2025 and I told myself I’d work on my landscapey art side this year (I’m a comic/cartoon artist mainly). Somehow I found myself curious about the one box of pastels that I’ve had forever and never used, and quickly fell down the pastel rabbit hole.

I have a lot to learn but so far I’m really enjoying creating with them. The photo ref was taken on holiday in Cornwall (UK).

Soft pastel

Sorry for spamming the sub tonight, this is the last post I promise. Here is two pics of the dust. I did use a small, soft brush to get rid of the top layers and start again because I didn’t like how it was going, but even before I did that there was a LOT of dust.

And my pastels were just being eaten up so much!

For this one I used colourfix paper. Which I’ve used before and it didn’t do this. So I’m not sure why

At least the colours are closer this time?

Also both paintings tonight have chewed up my pastels with a LOT of dust. For the first one I used homemade colourfix primed paper, for this one I used actual colourfix paper. I’ve used both the primer and proper paper before and never this much dust. I am doing the same technique as usual. Any idea why this is happening?