Pastels for the Absolute Beginner by Rebecca de Mendona

This thorough guide to the rewarding medium of pastel will teach you much more than just the basics and may be the only pastel book you'll ever need!

Beginning at the beginning, Rebecca looks at materials and supports as well as setting up a workspace and basic mark-making. She follows this with simple drawing lessons that guide you through a nicely progressive range of three-dimensional shapes, introducing shading, tone and colour.

Further exercises exploit pastel's unique qualities as both a drawing and a painting medium and provide insights into the possibilities offered. All these early lessons are quite short and you'll never be discouraged by lengthy sessions that produce little - quick results always make you want to learn more.

The real meat of the book, and its main virtue, is the sheer breadth of subjects that follows. As well as introducing new techniques in an eminently practical way, these cover landscapes, waterscapes, trees, skies, people and animals. Usefully, as well as being more than proficient at all of these, Rebecca is also at home with both fine detail and loose styles of working.

As an introduction, this gives you the chance to explore the medium as widely as possible and also to decide on what you want to paint and how you want to work. Comprehensive and painstaking, this is a guide that's rewarding and easy to follow.