I have pretty much finished work on the Anita portrait now, as I want to start something new. One thing I have found with pastels is that mixing is limited; you can mix on the paper by smudging which is a bit haphazard. So for this reason very large ranges of colours are produced to allow you to choose the colour you want. I have a range of 24 and I have found that to be far too small, especially in the dark colours. I found myself using black quite a lot in Anita's portrait because there just wasn't another colour dark enough. I have a dark blue which is the next darkest and up from that is a dark brown which is quite a bit lighter.

The other problem is that working on a small scale is tricky because of the bulky-ness of the pastel sticks. Sometimes I want a fine point to draw a line say for around the fine lines of the face. Trying to locate the corner of a thick stick of pastel is haphazard and I don't get enough control over where it is going on the paper.

I am going to read up about these issues for solutions, but I am thinking I may start oil painting soon.