Pastel practice:
Continuation of the drawing technique

Table of contents

Continuation of the drawing technique

But the development of pastel painting did not stop the development of drawing. Many artists used 3 colors to perform sketches and sketches: white chalk, coal and sanguine. The most outstanding of the artists who achieved excellence in the execution of drawings "three pencils" called Jean Antoine Watteau, whose work many compare with the work of the great Rubens. After Watteau, no one was able to master the secrets of this amazing technique.

More and more pastel technique began to be applied at the end of the 18th century. The development of Romanism entailed a new understanding of art in which painting became part of the education of a cultural person of that time. Students of Northern Europe, in their travels, used their artistic skills to create sketches. Very often, these sketches were performed by pastel. The landscape more and more attracted the attention of artists who were looking for means to capture the beautiful moments that nature offers. Pastel is the best suited for these purposes. Kostumbrist painting even began to become popular: images of everyday scenes, their lives of ordinary people. The pastel technique is great for working from nature, and the awakened interest in reality added independence to it: since then, the ideal was not imitation of oil, but a reflection of the colors of real life.

Cabinet of drawings, Louvre Museum, Paris (France). Eugene Delacroix (1790-1863). Study for the painting "The Death of Sardanapalus." Romantic painters have widely used pastel in sketching to study movement.

Landscape, as a genre, has been known since time immemorial, but only in the 19th century did it acquire independent value and, initially, represented an idealized background for scenes from the Bible or myths. The spread of pastels at the beginning of the XIX century not only coincided, but also became the impetus for the development of the landscape as an independent direction in painting - rich and unpredictable. Many artists began to write nature directly from nature, often resorting to the use of pastels.

Marmottan Museum, Paris (France). Eugene Boudin (1824-1898). On the beach.