Working with Pastels

I have been working with pastels lately and my little artist has been eyeing them up. We got her pastels out the other day, along with some heavy paper, contact paper, scissors and paper towels. We cut a few shapes from the contact paper to use as a masking device. Using both the positive and negative shapes we stuck a few at a time to the paper and started to fill in the spaces with pastels.

Pastels are a great medium for blending colors. Rubbing with a paper towel helps to smooth and blend. Rubbing over the contact paper, then peeling it off, creates bright clean white spaces and interesting shapes. You can then restick the contact ppaer over new white spaces or places that have already been colored.