Pastels : Affordable, Versatile, Vibrant, and Travel Friendly - A Valuable Asset for Any Artist!
Pastels are versatile, vibrant and convenient to use. We love them! You can choose between oil or chalk pastels for two quite different finishes - glossy or matte.
What Are Pastels?
Pastels are the closest medium to pure pigment you can find; they are convenient to use, beautifully vibrant and can really make your paintings zing with colour! All pastels are pigment held together with a binder. The binder in oil pastels is wax and linseed oil; the binder in chalk - or ‘soft’ - pastels is gum with a chalk filler. They come in stick form so you can apply the colour directly to the paper, smudge layer and blend to your heart’s content!
Excellent Quality Senellier Soft Pastels
With both types of pastel, it’s worth spending a few extra pounds to buy a good quality set. Cheaper oil pastels tend to be more like wax crayons – they are difficult to layer up and blend, and cheap soft pastels don't contain as much pure pigment so your results will be less vibrant and the pastels can feel hard or scratchy as you use them.
We love Seawhite Oil Pastels, great value and very soft and colourful!
Finished Surface Texture
Because oil pastels contain oil, the finished effect is painterly (thick, oily and may be sometimes be slightly glossy once several layers have been applied and blended). Soft pastels have a matt, powdery finish. Both types should be used on specialist Pastel Paper, which has a dimpled texture, or ‘tooth’ to help the pastel stick to the surface. This also contributes to the finished texture of the artwork.
Textured Detail in an Owl Drawing in Soft Pastel by Emma
Fixing the Painting
The surface of an oil pastel painting is sticky and doesn’t fully dry out, so take care to cover your finished picture with a protective sheet such as tracing or greaseproof paper for storage. Otherwise it might imprint onto whatever it’s next to in your folder or portfolio. If you choose to frame it, it’s best to use a box frame or a thick mount so the painting is not touching the glass.
A soft pastel painting can be sealed with fixative spray (or hairspray) to prevent smudging. However, even with a fixative, you should store your work under protective paper art the pastel dust remains fairly loose.
Painting with Pastels
Although soft and oil pastels are very different in their characteristics, the techniques used to apply them are fairly similar.
Lay out your composition, with a colour similar to your paper or similar to the objects or scene you’re depicting. Then carefully plan where the medium, dark and light tones go and work from light to dark as it's difficult to apply white or light colours over dark colours. Only add the darkest tones at the very end and try to avoid using black as it tends to dominate a picture.
Be careful not to muddy your colours by blending too many together. We cover Colour Theory in one of our Starter Fact Sheets, but just remember that all 3 primary colours make brown, and opposites on the colour wheel make grey. If you want your colours to remain pure and vibrant, only layer colours on top of each other that are close to each other on the colour wheel.
With oil pastels, the colour tends to stay put once it’s on the page, whereas chalk pastels are dusty and smudge easily. With both types of pastel, work from top to bottom or left to right (if you’re right handed, right to left if you’re left handed) to prevent your arm smudging what you’ve done; alternatively, use a piece of scrap paper to cover the part of the painting you aren't working on.
A garden in Oil Pastel. Where the layers have been built up, the pastel can be blended to a smoother finish.
Adding Finer Details
As both types of pastel are chunky compared to a pencil, the finished effect from both tends to be impressionistic. But there are a few techniques that can help you add finer details towards the end.
With oil pastels you can use "sgraffito" - this is where you scratch into the pastels with a cocktail stick to reveal the layer below. With chalk pastels you may decide to invest in some soft pastels in pencil form which allows you to add much finer details.
Stippling (fine dots) and stencilling also allow you to add sharper lines and finer details to your work.
Whichever pastels you use, it will take longer to create a finished piece than it does paint, so be patient and enjoy the exciting process of slowly bringing something to life.
Note : DON'T CONFUSE OIL PASTELS WITH OIL STICKS WHICH HAVE A MUCH HIGHER OIL CONTENT AND WORK LIKE OIL PAINTSWould you love to try your hand with Pastels? Join us for our 10 week All-Abilities course and explore wide range of mediums and artistic styles. These art classes are suitable for all abilities, including complete beginners. We explore everything from architecture to portraits, using pencils, charcoal, pastels, watercolour, gouache and acrylics.