For years I had marvelled at the animal and child portraits I had seen done in pastel, and longed to emulate them, but to no avail. So my pastels were consigned to the back of the cupboard. That was, until I saw a Vic Bearcroft demonstration on the SAA painting channel last year. I immediately obtained some velour paper, dug out my pastels and got to work. Not too successful I have to admit, but I could see the benefit of this new support and was determined to make it work. Up until then I had been trying to use student pastels,big mistake! You can get away with the cheaper acrilycs,oils and even watercolours when learning, but I soon learned you could not use cheap pastels. Investing in a few artist quality pastels suddenly all became clear, the velour at once became my 'new best friend' and a joy to work with. I entered my first completed pastel into the SAA magazine 'try something different' section, it was published ! just the encouragement I needed. I've read several comments on the site where people have tried velour and not had the same results as me so here are a few pointers on using this wonderful support. 1 Use Conte or better still Faber Castell hard pastels for outline and detail 2 Use Ashby soft pastels for tone and softer colour detail ( I've tried Senellier and found them too soft, but have not tried Unison) 3 Rub the pastel (especially the underpainting) well in to the velour, you can add far more layers than conventional pastel papers, so you can blend colours and hide mistakes. 4 When finished just give the painting a shake and blow away any loose pastel 5 You do not need a fixative and I have never had a problem with framing you can even roll the painting up for transport without fear of damage. Note: obviously the surface can become slightly smudged or dulled if ones too rough or just plain careless, but the beauty of velour is that you can touch it up should you need to. I can only give advice from my experience, and hope it helps those out there having problems with this amazing product. Try it, used properly it's fantastic, especially for those furry friends we all love to paint.