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color at your fingertips: the world of pastels

Working with pastels can provide you with a tactile artistic experience, filled with endless color-blending, textural versatility and immediate pleasure. Pastels fill the gap between pencil drawing and painting – and provide artists with endless possibilities for color combinations, texture and imagery.

The sticks
If you’re just starting out with pastels, you may not want to get too invested in supplies until you’re comfortable with the medium. If so, simply experiment with individual sticks from different manufacturers instead of buying large sets. Limit your selection to a few browns, a black, a white and then select your colors. If you’re able, buy three different tones (light, mid-tone and dark) across the range of warm and cool primary and secondary colors. Once you get hooked on painting with pastels, a set of 24 – 48 sticks will do you well.

Pastel sticks are sold as hard, medium and soft. Hard sticks and pastel pencils are best for detailed work and hatching; soft sticks provide looser, broad strokes and an easily blended, chalky texture. The medium hardness pencils straddle the two. Most people think of soft sticks when they consider pastels, and indeed, soft sticks do provide the classic pastel painting look and are more commonly available. Use a hard stick for under-painting or sketching your image, then use the softer pastels over those strokes to provide the full, rich colors.

The paper
Pastels adhere to the tooth of the plane they’re applied to, so the surface itself becomes part of the artistry. Use textured paper, pastel cloth, sandpaper, even cardboard to elicit the mood of your work. Intensity and depth emerge from the layers of pastel color you apply, so experiment as you blend and enjoy.

Art supply retailers sell special paper expressly for pastels in several colors, from neutral to dark, both as individual sheets and in pads. Generally, pads are 9"x12" and 12"x18", single sheets 18"x24" or 19"x25".

The technique
Because pastels are dry and solid, colors are blended on the working surface, not on a palette like oils, acrylics or watercolors. For blended colors, overlap strokes, placing the first color down in short parallel strokes in one direction, then layer additional colors over the base, either cross-hatching or directly layering. Consider more than straight strokes for additional effect but don’t overwork the layers. Allow your eye to do the work of creating the image.

Texture and depth can be easily manipulated too. Create a smooth surface by wiping the stroke of color with your finger, a brush, a cloth or a “stump” of paper rolled to a point at the end. Crosshatch or stipple different colors of the tint and your eye blends the colors. Thin your strokes with water or turpentine for a different effect. You can even integrate the color of the paper you’re working with for more artistic options.

The finish
To keep your work from smearing or flaking, use an aerosol fixative available at art supply outlets. There’s also a working fixative that permits retouching. Neither of these fixatives will completely prevent smearing, so handle your paintings gently and don’t file them with the image against any other surface. Ideally, protect your finished work by matting and framing it, being careful to use a thick enough mat that keeps the pastels from touching the glass.

The inspiration
Seek out the pastel work of Degas, Cassatt, de Koonig and Morisot to find the beauty and flexibility the medium provides. Whether you focus on creating a still life, a portrait or a freeform, pastels make nearly any artistic expression a colorful one.

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