Pastel and Glazing

All this started with one problem i had with the manali valley painting. The right bottom stone sort of protrusion that i had to do. I couldnt get the texture of the rock right, i tried all color combinations and i didnt want to use black . Not succeeding, I left the painting alone for a fewdays. Then i took it up one lazy evening as i couldnt start a new painting so late, after wasting the whole morning, and started doing it, prepared that i would scrape everything off if it didnt come out well. It isnt great perhaps, but i arrived at "letting the thing be" state and was satisfied with the overall outcome.
It wasnt so detailed that it would takes eyes off the background mountians which were the main center point of the painting. This is the reason why didnt want to tweak the righ corner rock  a little more and improvise few flowers that i found around the place.


Thats when i started wondering if i should be using glazing (or was it glazing that i used to finish the rock) . I used very light back paint, more of the thinner than paint really, to smudge over the rock to get the leaky rock black moss effect. And then used a little similar white and green highlights for the greenish moss and black for moss in shadow areas. It satisfied me sufficiently.

Thats when i thought i should really start using glazing much more consciously than accidentally stumble upon. And around the same time my young friend who was interested in learning art through pastels had come for my help/advice. He is 12 year old with 50 hard pastel set. What is a best medium to learn about glazing than pastels !! where most of the mixing of colors is done on the paper through glazing/layering.

For basic idea of what is glazing , check this link:
http://painting.about.com/od/oilpainting/a/GeraldD_glazing.htm

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/technique/technique_glazing.html
Thats when i started pastels and did this still life, copied from a oil painting image, more images when i finish it.