Experimenting with oil pastels and watercolors

My Monday watercolor class surprised me today with some new pieces they worked on while I was away for two weeks teaching workshops. Some of them met at the class site one week and some worked on their own. I love it when they do that! I surprised them in turn by bringing oil pastels for them to experiment with. They did small drawings on rough watercolor paper, some just lines and some with shading. Then they painted watercolor washes over the oil pastel. The pastel acted as a resist and stood out brightly from the washes. Some of them added colored oil pastel to dry watercolors to enhance areas, which looked really nice. Our critique period was fun today with show-and-tell of the new technique and the recent paintings. The class is growing by leaps and bounds.