Experimenting with pastel on watercolor paper

In the pursuit of trying new materials this morning 90lb hot pressed watercolor paper was used for the ground. For those that don't use pastel, the ground is the surface you apply the pastel to. It is typically a type of paper or board. The surface of the paper or board needs to have texture that the pastel can catch as it is dragged along the surface. 90lb hot pressed watercolor paper has almost no texture and is about as smooth as paper used for printing. I knew going into this that I would have a hard time but didn't expect it to be anything like it was. When I apply pastel I have a bit of a heavy hand. That is something that I need to work on and it isn't that big of a problem on sanded paper which I usually use. This paper that I used today would only allow one passing of pastel before the surface was full of pigment. This is a big problem if you want to layer or you slightly overlap your dark areas with lighter values. Any over lapping causes the subsequent layer to come off onto the pastel stick in hand and turns what is being laid down into mud.

Thankfully I didn't spend to much time on this experiment because I knew where it was headed before I began. The composition is weak and everything smudged up making it look like a child's finger painting. After painting this I realized how fortunate I was in the beginning of my pastel journey that I was told to get good paper. Like it is in watercolor, the paper is one of the biggest factors in overall appearance and ability to manipulate the medium. Unlike watercolor, pastel is a forgiving medium and you can simply wipe off what you don't like and redo it. Although I just threw this painting away because you can't fix something that wont work in the first place. In watercolor you can sometimes get good surprises, in pastels the surprises typically are not good. If you are just beginning in pastel do yourself a favor and buy good paper to work on until you have the basics down. I could see getting horribly frustrated after doing this a couple of times and thinking that was normal characteristics of the medium.