Malayavanta Hill, In Oil Pastel

Oil pastel paintings are (for me, for now) faster than watercolours, so are the ideal choice when I want to create a second work in a single day.  Because I need to start practising landscapes with the pastels, I thought I'd have a go at painting the same scene that I'd just done in watercolour.

As usual, there's not much to say about how I did this one.  I drew a pencil outline, rubbed in the sky with pastels on their sides, blended it all with my finger.  Filled in the rest with dabs in multiple colours, trying to put dabs in places where there weren't already dabs.  Went for darker colours in shadowy areas.  Blended the colours with my finger.  Where I didn’t like the resulting colours, I added corrective colours on top and blended them in.  And I finished with some scraping where I wanted textures, highlights or whatever.

All the usual techniques really.  I guess the only thing worth mentioning is that I did also drop some crazy impressionistic colours into the rocks.  And where my rock colours accidentally went into the sky, I put white over the top and blended it in.

Comparing this to my earlier watercolour, the rocks definitely have more bulk to them - they're three dimensional.  Does this mean I'm already better at pastels than at watercolours?  Does that say something about my watercolour ability?  Or about my potential with oil pastels?  This one is the first oil pastel painting to go up for sale - the one sold at the church auction doesn't count.