So, I ended up painting the rest of the pastel board with acrylic paint (Golden’s Fluid Acrylics in the yellow ochre color).

What was interesting is that the performance of the pastel sticks changed. Great America, NuPastel, Blick and Blue Earth skipped all over, and pigment was just falling off the painted paper! On the other hand, the Richeson Hand-Rolled and Sennelier seemed to grip the painted surface acceptably.

So, what have I learned?

• I’ll use up my stash of Canson Touch and not buy any more
• In the future, I’ll stick with neutral paper colors: either a light beige or a light gray, and skip colors like “Twilight” and Indigo. (Unless I paint a night scene.)
• I’m happy with the way the Richeson Hand-rolled pastels performed on the Canson Touch paper, painted or unpainted.
• I could use the Canson Touch with charcoal in the future.
• I had no trouble with putting the acrylic paint to the Canson Touch paper.