Pastel Progress: 5 Honest Lessons from My Artistic Journey

Written By Ann Richman

Above is a comparison of 2 pastel pieces I have completed on the same subject matter. While I still think “Truffles” on the left is cute, I can see how I have improved using the medium over the years.

My Medium Transition to Soft Pastels

If you’ve read my blogs over the years, you know I’m someone who likes to reflect. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert—constantly thinking (and sometimes overthinking). But one of the upsides of reflection is that I get to share what I’ve learned with you. Hopefully, some of these takeaways will be useful not just for working with soft pastels but for your own creative journey using any media.

When I rekindled my art practice around 2017, I started with graphite and quickly transitioned to colored pencils—mainly for their portability. As a teacher, I could easily bring them to school and squeeze in some drawing time during breaks or SOL hall monitoring.

Later on, I explored a few tutorials using PanPastels and pastel pencils from artists like Leontine van Vliet, Jason Morgan, and Kirsty Partridge. I was happy to discover that I could complete a piece much faster than with colored pencils—and even more excited by how forgiving pastels could be.

Once I changed jobs, portability wasn’t as important anymore. Currently, I make time to create in my home. In January 2024, I invested in a set of Unison soft pastels and treated myself to tutorials by Emma Colbert.

Well—that was it. I’m hooked.

Here’s what I’ve learned over the past year and a half since I first started using soft pastel sticks—along with a few tips you can try yourself.

  1. Fill Out Your Pallette As Soon As You Can

This is a commission for my old boss of his granddog, Nellie (2024). Lesson learned from this piece- buy more greens! I had a heck of a time rendering the grass, and I ended up using my pencils more that I would like as it is more time consuming.

While I’ve found that Unisons and Terry Ludwig’s are probably my favorite brands of soft pastels so far, I’ve also come to realize that the brand itself isn’t everything. In fact, having a wide range of colors has proven to be even more important to me than sticking to one brand.

Each pastel brand has its own unique qualities, and over time, you’ll discover which ones you prefer. But given how expensive they are, I suggest staying open to trying different brands—especially to help round out your color palette.

It’s true that you can create beautiful work with a limited selection, but it’s not easy. You can blend pastels, but it’s still not the same as mixing paint. Having a broader color range really does make the process more enjoyable and flexible.

In the future, I’d like to do a detailed blog on my favorite soft pastel supplies and why, but until then, I’ll provide some links to helpful resources and basic pastels and tools to get you started. (If you purchase something from an Amazon link you click on, I will appreciatively receive a small percentage of your purchase, which helps me to avoid the whole “starving artist” thing.)

First off, Dakota Art Pastels is a great supplier in the States. They also have a lot of information on their site that can help you make a decision on what types of soft pastels might work for you. This Pastel Comparison Guide is very simple. It breaks the brands that they sell down into three categories: soft, medium, and hard. And they provide definitions of these terms.

My main takeaway from this is: don’t fall into the trap of thinking you must buy only a specific brand or type of pastel for your work to be good. That simply isn’t true. While I do recommend investing in higher-quality supplies when possible, there’s no need to limit yourself to just one brand. Keep your options open—you’ll naturally figure out your favorites over time, and then you can build your collection around those.

That said, I completely understand how expensive art supplies can be! If I were starting out again, here’s the quick and dirty list of what I’d buy—and what I’d skip:

Buy-

A set of pencils. Either of these is fantastic. You only need one to start!

A set of soft pastels of the brand of your choice. Look for a color range that will suit whatever subject matter you prefer to draw. A lot of brands sell half-stick sets, so consider that if you want a cheaper option.

Skip!-

Pan Pastels. There, I said it. Save your money for the soft pastels instead. I know I recommended them in previous blogs, but I’m changing my mind. I don’t use them at all anymore. I have tried lately, and I get too annoyed with mixing the pigment and putting the pigment on paper, and then applying the pigment. Life is too short! Just give me a stick, and let’s get moving. I do like their Softt Tools, though! I use them with my sticks sometimes. They help to blend and smooth the pigment into the tooth of the paper.

2. Keep Records of Which Soft Pastels You Buy

My soft pastel collection so far. You’ll note some of them don’t have the wrapper on them! I keep track of which ones I have purchased so I don’t buy the same one twice on accident. They are too expensive for that!

I still don’t like peeling the wrappers off my soft pastels—but I do it. And you will too, eventually. Especially if you want to use the side of the stick or break it into smaller pieces for better control.

Unison sells a gorgeous full-color chart that I’d love to own (it appears it is out of stock at the moment). It includes color swatches which you can check off the ones you own. But since I live in the States, I just can’t justify paying $40 in shipping for a $50 chart. For that price, I could buy another nice set of pastel sticks!

Instead, I do two things to keep track of my collection: I create color swatches, and I maintain a Google Sheet of all the pastels I’ve purchased. Is it time-consuming? Definitely. But without it, I’d have no idea which colors I still need, or what to reorder when I use up a stick.

This is a picture of my Unison Additional color swatch sheet. You can see I laminated it because it’s shiny. If you are going to laminate, see if you can do it with a less shiny version. I think it would work better, but this is good enough in a pinch.

You can do this kind of tracking for any brand of soft pastels—not just Unisons.

To make your color swatches, organize them by collection or color family. For example, I group mine by color types like Blue Violets or Additional colors (like the sheet above).

I also like to leave space for the pastels I plan to buy in the future. I label the paper with all the available colors in a set, then swatch only the ones I own. Once I’ve filled in an entire color collection, I laminate the sheet. It ends up shinier than I’d prefer, but without lamination, the pastel smears everywhere.

These swatch charts can also be used to help you select colors for a piece—that’s not something I typically do, but it’s a great option. I mostly use them to identify which color I need to reorder when a stick runs low. When that happens, I just compare the worn-down pastel to my chart to find its name.

Screen shot of part of my Google Sheet table. The x indicates if I own the pastel. The blue highlight means I have 2 of those pastels. Orange were ones I wanted and purchased. I think. Lesson for me to make a key of the highlights in the table in the future😂.

For my Google Sheet, I checked Unison’s website to see how many pastels are in each color range. Then I created a table and checked off the ones I own. It’s super helpful when I’m restocking—plus, keeping the list updated means I always know exactly what I have and what I still need.


3. Focus on Getting Your Values Right

“Ewe and Me”, 2023, soft pastel piece of two Valais black-nosed lambs.

I’ve written about this topic in several other blog posts—so why bring it up again? Because I still struggle with getting my values right. And honestly, value is the most important element when it comes to making your subjects look realistic.

Values refer to the lights and darks in your piece. It’s much easier to judge them accurately if you first view your artwork—and your reference photo—in black and white. You can do this digitally, or you can practice on a more monochrome piece, like the one above, to better compare the values.

I do this for every piece I work on. If I forget or skip this step until I’m well into the process, I almost always discover that my values are off—some areas aren’t dark enough, others are too dark or not light enough. I’m hoping that with regular practice, I’ll eventually train my eye and won’t need this trick, but I’m not there yet.

Let me show you what I mean with the piece I'm currently working on. In the first set of images, you can see the differences between the reference photo on the left and my artwork on the right. See if you can spot where I still need to lighten some areas. Don’t worry too much about the hues—my photo is off in terms of color accuracy. Once I scan the final piece, the true colors will come through much better.

Reference photograph versus artwork in color.

Last night, I applied filters to convert both images to monochrome. This helps me fine-tune the values before finishing. You can see the result below—notice how much easier it is to tell where I need to adjust light and dark areas. For example, I’ll add some lighter hair strands on the ear and darken just below it before calling this one complete.

One more thought before I move on: I’ve learned not to stress so much about picking the perfect hue. I used to fixate on getting an exact color match. But with more practice, I’ve realized that value—not color—is what really makes a piece feel realistic. If the values are correct, the subject will look three-dimensional and believable, even if the color isn’t a perfect match.

That’s such a freeing realization—it allows you to experiment with color more confidently, instead of feeling boxed in by trying to match hues exactly.

The goal isn’t to copy the photo exactly, but to use it as a guide for getting the values right. That’s what ultimately creates realism.

If you'd like to dive deeper into values, here are a couple of blog posts where I explore it further:

4. Try Other Colors in the Lights and Shadows

“Sienna In Snow”, 2023 (sold).

If you can, try to think outside the box when choosing colors for your shadows and highlights. My artwork wasn’t as strong when I relied on standard grays for shadows and pure white for highlights. In fact, for the piece above, I don’t think I used white at all—and you’d never know just by looking at it. Instead, I used lighter versions of blue-violet and purple, knowing those colors would harmonize beautifully with the fox’s oranges and reds. For the shadows, I leaned into darker shades of those same hues.

This is where Color Theory really starts to matter. One basic tenet is that your brain can interpret light and shadow more naturally when you use complementary colors. For example, warm orange tones in the sunlight and cool blues in the shadows often create a striking, believable contrast. It takes both courage and practice to make these choices, but trust me—it’s worth it. Your work will look more dynamic and visually compelling.

Over the past year or so, I’ve taken a deep dive into Color Theory. If you’re curious to learn more, here are a few blog posts where I share some of the key insights I’ve picked up along the way:

5. Time is Your Friend

“Bear”, 2025. This was completed following a tutorial on Painterly Pet Portraits with Alain Picard. It’s not my typical style, but it’s great to get outside of your comfort zone from time to time.

Okay, so maybe time doesn’t feel all that friendly as it rushes by faster and faster—but here’s the thing: the time is going to pass anyway. So ask yourself: What are you working on right now that you want to improve?

It’s easy to feel discouraged on social media when you see artists creating incredible work. But remember—they weren’t born that way. They put in countless hours of practice to get where they are. The only way to improve is to show up consistently and keep drawing, even on the days you don’t feel like it.

A great way to start building that consistency is by setting a small, achievable goal. Try practicing for just 30 minutes a day, four days a week. Start there, and see if you can increase it over time. You’ll probably find that once it becomes a habit, you’ll want to make time for it—it becomes something you need to do.

Right now, I’m finding it harder to carve out time for art as I settle into a new job. But I’m still making progress, and I know I’ll develop a new routine that puts my creative practice back at the center.

Keep creating. Not every piece has to be a masterpiece. Practice. Take lessons. Practice. Succeed. Fail. Repeat. You will get better—promise.

Final Thoughts

The soft pastel journey is full of lessons—some technical, some personal. I’ve learned the importance of checking values early, choosing colors thoughtfully using color theory, and making consistent practice a priority, even if it’s just 30 minutes a few times a week. I’ve also found that filling out my color palette early and keeping track of my pastels with swatches has made my workflow smoother and more enjoyable.

Progress comes with time, patience, and a lot of trial and error. Keep showing up, stay curious, and remember—you’re growing with every single mark you make. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Ann Richman https://annrichmanart.com
Next

Creating an Inspiring Art Space: Tips for Organizing Your Studio