Initial experiences with pastels will either go dead end or otherwise. Either you fall in and are in love at first sight, or you look at a dirty smear on a costly piece of paper and wonder whether knitting was not the prudent pursuit. The two reactions are both completely normal. Learn more here!
What makes the difference between the two experiences nearly always is the early guidance. An introductory course provides you with the base knowledge that you can never expect to obtain with all the YouTube navigation. You know where the pitfalls are before you have fallen into them – and that in itself renders the investment money well spent.
The reasonable beginning place is the soft pastels. They are creamy, forgiving and mix with little effort. The thing that strikes most beginners is not the pastels, it is what they are stuck on. Normal sketchbook paper does not have an attachment. Pigment is resting there, half-determined, and disappears in the least touch. Everything is different with sanded paper or special pastel board. The texture holds the pigment in place and all at once the medium begins to act like a medium.
Layering is a situation in which beginners unknowingly go wrong quietly. First on the surface are the darks. Lights build on top of them. Switch up that order and you will have to waste more time wrestling with the painting you are already painting than you are painting it, wrestling a composition that appears to have formed its own views. This is preempted by good education and avoids a lot of frustration later in life.
It takes another mental model than mixing paint to blend pastels. It does not have a palette tray. It is in the paper that the mixing occurs. Soft atmospheric transitions are made by fingers. A tortillon provides sharper and more conscious edges. Hazy overlaying strokes retain texture and imply actual depth. Every approach leaves a different visual impression, and it is just knowing which one to turn to, first of all, that makes a flat, lifeless work of art and one that actually breathes.
The most misconstrued product in the kit of a beginner photographer is fixative spray. It is not only a finish line coat, but a layer between. The application of a light layer in the middle of the work freezes earlier work and provides more recent layers with something to cling to. Omit this and a single hasty gesture in an arm may wreck a hour of hard work.
Choice of subjects is much more important than many beginners can imagine. A bowl of ceramic material, a folded piece of cloth, one piece of fruit, a piece of fruit, big, with distinct shadows, will teach you value and proportion, without exactness which you yourself have not yet attained. Portraits come much later.
Dust on your hands at the conclusion of a session? That is only evidence that you have done the work.