Pastels are sneaky. At first you assume it is just a humble stick of chalk, and three hours later you have the floor of your kitchen table and your shirt full of a cloud of color you never thought yourself able to produce. That is what is happening with this medium. The Tingology It moves fast, forgives only a little, and somehow pulls more instinct from you than many other artistic mediums.
A good pastel course will not overprotect you. In week one you learn how the tooth of the paper—the texture beneath your hand—changes every stroke. By week two you are layering colors that should clash but somehow cooperate. In truth it resembles a bit of artistic anarchy. You start with simple value studies — dull, it is, but those practice is gradually getting the groundwork laid, on which your pictures will not rest flat.
One habit you will likely pick up—good or bad—comes from blending with your fingers, though beginners are rarely told this. Most instructors will advise using a tortillon instead. You'll nod. Then your thumb quietly joins the process. And sometimes? It works perfectly. The thing is that pastels are liberal of experimentation in a sense that oil painting, say, lacks the forbearance.
One of them once referred to her pastel course experience as learning to drive a stick shift, it was so frightening, embarrassing and then just clicking to make everything seem to go slow. That description is surprisingly accurate. The learning curve is a painful experience initially, but plateaus are seldom extended. Progress often appears almost week by week.
The way a course deals with color theory is what makes the difference between a decent and a great course. Not merely warm and cool fundamentals, but the fact that even a slight advance of one violet into shadow may set the rest of your picture. If your instructor loves explaining why colors work together, hold onto them. Understanding color naturally leads to deeper curiosity.