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gallery of
~Imagination~
Pastel Painting Techniques & Materials
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Her First Easter © By Mary Beatty
PASTELS
A PASTEL is a stick of pure pigment, plus chalk, held together by gum tragacanth as a binder. (Oil paints and watercolors are made from the same raw pigments but with different binders.) The amount of binder determines the hardness or softness of the pastel. Soft pastels crumble easily. Harder ones with more binder are more durable. So we have a choice between durability and brilliance.
The medium of pastel can be used to draw and paint at the same time. It is an exciting medium and the colors are immensely varied and luminous! Light reflects from the jewel-like particles that form on the surface of the painting. (Another major reason I choose not to use a final fixative spray!)
Rembrandt, Rowney, Grumbacher, Girault -- you name the brand and I probably have some of them. There's nothing more enticing than opening your painting taboret drawers to see all those richly colored pastel sticks! I've accumulated hundreds, but my all time favorites are the luminous Sennelier soft pastels made in Paris, France. When I acquired my first boxed set of 250 this brand was scarcely found anywhere in the U.S., but can now be easily found in larger cities as well as some art catalogs. A big advantage now, of course, most of the colors can be ordered for replacement. They have but one fault: they were so pricy I became quite stingy with them! Of course, since they are so soft, they need to be used sparingly anyway, used more like "the topping on the cake." That's because one firm stroke on your pastel paper and the "tooth" is filled, resisting any further layering. We still must have the harder pastel sticks.
PASTEL PAPER
Canson-MiTeintes pastel paper is archival, and can withstand numerous revisions and corrections. It comes in fifty-some colors, is available in sheets, rolls, pads and fine-art boards. I purchase the #431 Steel Gray sheets in lots of 100 for a nice price break. The serious beginner might start with ten or twenty-five from a discount art supply warehouse, usually at half the cost of an individual sheet purchased from the local art store. This medium gray color is perfect because you can paint both lights and darks into it while the paper works as the mid-tone, and can even be left as a background. (See Fill Me With Grace - below) In time, you will want to add a few sheets of mixed colors of your choosing, usually with a minimum order of ten sheets. (Back)
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Fill Me With Grace © By Mary Beatty
TECHNIQUES
There are generally three basic approaches to creating a pastel painting. One thing these methods have in common is the layering of color.
Linear Approach
My usual procedure is to work from hard to soft pastel. I begin with a line drawing in hard pastel. Then hard pastel to fill in color. The hard brands (NuPastel, Holbein) just sit on the surface of the paper and don't fill up the crevices. Soft pastels (Sennelier and Rembrandt) will. Beginning the painting using hard pastel allows my paper surface to stay open so more pastel can be applied. You will add several layers of colors.
Block-In Approach
Instead of outlining objects in a composition first, many pastelists start by blocking in all the largest shapes with hard pastel applied in broad, massed strokes.
Line and Mass
This technique combines both line and mass to build color and volume. Areas of color are set down and rubbed in. Everything is kept vague.
Here's a method I like to use: I make a separate wash of two or three acrylic paint colors (burnt umber, purple and cerulean blue) and rub in large areas of color using an old soft rag. Of course you will be using a very heavy watercolor paper or museum board for this technique as the lighter papers will warp. Acrylic primed canvas works well also, see Still Life on Washed Canvas, below. This is a wonderful way to quickly cover that white surface that's intimidating you! Then go back in with your hard pastels and do the blocking-in or drawing. This is considered a Mixed Media painting.
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S. L. On Washed Canvas © By Mary Beatty
Background Music: Going Far Away
Original midi by Jim Stark
