Photo courtesy : Stan Collins (_sdcollins in Twitter). This was done with his permission.
I caved in and bought some sennelier soft pastels . They are delicious .. no .. not as food haha but the colors. Very vibrant as you can see the red. However they break very easily and I had to vacuum like crazy - all that pastel dust.
In retrospect I realize that I should have gone for landscape instead of portrait but this came out better than I expected. There were times when I was ... "what is this that I am doing" and of course " Do I stop now or keep going" - which is always a problem area for me.