This is a waggish take on all those Painting with the Expert shows; I can hardly claim to be an expert pastel painter, as this demonstration will show. If I have any skill, it is in persevering in the face of hideous intermediate results to finally achieve something that is marginally acceptable.

I am self-taught at pastels, and have always resented the 'how to' demonstrations in the pastel books. Even the sloppy sketches and value studies are beautiful! My sketches and intermediate results look like nothing recognizable, as you will see. (Larger versions of each pic lurk beneath waiting for your click. They will open up in a new window.)

	I keep it simple for this first demo, just to see if I can paint and photo-document as I go. Two squash agree to pose for me. The stand is an old office chair found at a thrift shop. The flash throws off the lighting - the light is actually coming from the right, and the highlight is further to the right than the flash-glare on the butternut.
I'm using Canson Mi-Tientes grey paper, smooth side. My initial sketch in grey pastel pencil isn't awful.
	All the books say to start on your background at the same time as you paint your foreground, but I usually forget and am putting it in at the last minute, and it looks all flat and after-thought-ish. I think I want an old Dutch Masters darkness to the pic, so I start with a dark background. Knowing I'm going to be documenting this painting's stages, I do what I'm supposed to, and start laying in background at the same time as I work the foreground. I also fill in the basic colors on the squash. I shade the ribs of the acorn with dark red. I read that somewhere...
I develop the shape of the butternut; it's easiest, being so smooth. I work some more on the dark background and then realize it's hideous - I hate it.
	I put the cast shadow of the butternut on the acorn in dark blue. The rib shading is built up (is it called a rib on a squash?) and I throw some pink-ish brown over the background to attempt to retrieve the shape of the acorn, which vanished into the hideous background. The acorn gets its orange stripe and I fatten up the shape of the butternut a bit.
Shading and highlights on the acorn. The background gets a wash of lavender, and the butternut stem gets a bit of definition.
	Whoops - I'd better set them down on a plane, hadn't I? I insert a flat area for them to sit upon and develop shadows a bit more.
Ground plane developed further, the backcast light on the left of the acorn is toned down a bit, some edges are smudged and some general smooshing around of the background and voila!

Alas, the experts are proven correct - this is one of my more successful pastel backgrounds. Memo to self: remember to work background all along.

If I were to be setting this up again from the beginning, I think I would rotate the arrangement so that the butternut more clearly occludes the acorn.

In earlier days, I would have stopped at the point where I realized I hated the background and tossed the intermediate results away. At some point I realized that intermediate results (for me, anyway) always suck, and if I would simply keep going, I might like the end result. It was a major painting epiphany for me.