If at first you don't succeed, beat it to death with a stick.

Okay, this is the trouble with being self-taught. Your teacher gets strange ideas. Probably this was a bit much to bite off in the early days of learning to use pastels. Probably I should have quit fooling around a long, long, long time ago. I just got so sure that if I kept at it, it would get better. This, despite the fact that over and over and over again, it never, never, never has worked. Insanity. Nevertheless, here it is. At least now I can move on to something new. Okay, I already have. In the end, it is good to learn what works, and even better to learn what doesn't.