Jaxon, Me and Fish - soft pastels

In between tidying up, the Christmas decorations are finally gone, I'm painting. I thought I'd do this, or rather, try it out, but that was a disappointment. The background turned out less beautiful than I expected, but it's certainly interesting. And so are the pastel sponges I used. On the incredibly smooth and thin Jaxon paper, I at least managed to blend the background nicely. A disadvantage of this thin paper is that the small bits in the pastels leave streaks in the paper. Not all pastels have such small, hard bits in some colours. The annoying thing is that this can't be removed, and I often only see it when I look through the camera.

And that, in my opinion, ruins my painting. Yesterday I also tried something quickly, and I clearly saw the pen print in the paper. So the question is how to prevent this. I think it's unavoidable, or it's better to use this thin paper for something else.

I found a video by someone who doesn't get many views when I was looking for fish, or rather, how to paint fish fins. It seems like not many people are interested in this. I found it very hard to understand this woman, and I had to crank up the volume to hear anything of her voice.
I don't think these fish are particularly special, but her background is quite interesting. Because my paper is smooth, I couldn't use more than 5 or 6 layers for the background, and I had to keep removing the crumbs (see photo) by dabbing them with a kneaded eraser. This works, by the way. I found it difficult to see what she was actually doing or the materials and colours she used on my phone because she doesn't say anything about it.
So you have to guess or do as I did, looking at the picture or the final result to know what to do.
It's a shame she didn't bother to point this out.

In any case, I ran into a few problems that I need to solve, and I learned something new.

Btw,If you'd like to use those pastel sponges, I highly recommend them on this smooth paper. I didn't have to rub nearly as hard to get a good result. You can also use much less pastel chalk, which is an advantage, especially if you can't use many layers due to the type of paper.
I haven't tried the sponges on other paper yet (I've run out of bamboo paper).