Bowl of fruit in oil pastels

In this exercise, I took an onion, pear, apple and a sliced lemon, and packed them into a small blue enamel bowl.

I think the result shows up all the benefits of drawbacks of using oil pastels. I love the bright colours which give a very vibrant effect. But I have to admit I struggled to get any real subtlety of shading or colour, possibly because of the limited range of pastels I was using. However, I did try to merge some of the colours, especially in the pear, to create both shape and shade.

On the whole, I don't think it's very well drawn. The bowl is not round (as it should be) and the fruits don't really "sit" in the bowl - they float without really showing the relationship between them very well.

However, I quite like the bright colours which create a pleasant pattern of colour blocks.