Here a few post showing the progress of a pastel work on Arches paper. Started with a grid to get the proper positioning of the bird on the paper. Then proceeded to laying in a ground using graphite pencil. Once that was completed it was time to lay in the first layer of colors to outline the subject.
WIP 4 - laying down under colors
WIP 3 - laying in pastel
WIP 2 - graphite
WIP 1 - grid and graphite