Pastels are all about painting with dust. Generally expensive dust.
Pastels can be vivid or muted. There is no traditional color mixing of pastels as with liquid media. Instead optical mixing - where adjacent points of color are mixed in the eye of the viewer - can be used to temper the hue and tone of a color. Another technique is to bend the pastel colors directly on the paper by smearing with a finger or a paper blending stump.

Papa Owl

Rain on Nasturtium Leaf

Worker Bee

Tropical Bird of Paradise

Purple Poppy

Orange Ranunculus

Purple Iris Trio

Hotel Congress Nocturne

Palo Verde Blossoms

Jello Molds on the Fence

Icelandic Poppy