Lantern Festival

I've had the photo this is based on in mind for something for a long time now. Coincidentally, I've also wanted to try out pastels on black paper ever since I started rewatching Batman: The Animated Series and found out that was how they did the backgrounds.

This was fun just to to work on colour and composition, rather than to strictly follow the photo or work on a portrait. I simplified the background and emphasized the diagonal running top right to bottom left in order to get more movement in the piece. I used stronger, more vibrant colours for those lanterns, but in more contrasting colours to make them pop, and finished them to higher degree then the peripheral lanterns, which I also covered in blue in order to mute the colours that were already there. The one thing I'm not sure of is if I just get another soft white pastel (what always happens to them?) and highlight the light in the middle of the lantern more.