Materials for pastel painting

Pastel is one of the purest graphic means, which is small pigments pressed into a homogeneous mass with a small amount of glue. It does not require diluents, does not need drying and, when applied to the base, perfectly reflects its color.

It is difficult to imagine anything even simpler than the basic principles of working with pastels: using pastels is as straightforward as drawing on the wall with chalk or charcoal. This section is devoted to describing the means of pastel painting, and not the rules for working with it, since in fact they do not exist: you do not need to use solvents or brushes to work, there is no need for preliminary preparation of the foundation, additional devices are not required and you can practically use any paper. However, a certain amount of knowledge will not be superfluous. For example, information that the quality of the finished product directly depends on the texture of the paper, or that the pastel is not only hard, but also soft (the latter being very easy to crumble), or the fact that the color of the paper greatly affects the overall tone of the work.All this and much more can be found in this section.

Of all the painting techniques, only pastel is characterized by the greatest purity of color, smells of freshness and still breathes simplicity.

Pastel Composition

The word "pastel" comes from the word pasta, which means the mass from which pastel sticks are made. The mass includes powder pigment, i.e. coloring matter, a small amount of water, a little gum arabic or tragacanth, which contribute to the bonding of powder particles, and white pigment, which are usually added to the main one to obtain a large number of shades. Pastel painting does not need preliminary preparation of the base and materials. No need to think about mixing colors to get the desired color: a wide variety of pastels of all colors and shades can satisfy the taste of any artist. Well, if you need something that goes beyond the existing palette, you can mix the tones immediately on paper.

Pastel colors, in fact, are compressed pigments, which include a small amount of a resinous substance - tragacanth or gum arabic. The concentration of pigment in pastels is much higher than in other paints, which gives an explanation for such an exceptional purity of colors.

Types of Pastels

The pastel can be soft, hard and look like a pencil. Its condition depends on the percentage of adhesive and powder pigment. A solid pastel, often confused with crayons, has the appearance of a small bar with a square section. Soft pastels are distinguished from hard pastels by their strength, due to the small amount of adhesive and less strong pressing it cannot be sharpened as hard, but the variety of shades is simply amazing. Therefore, solid pastel is more often used to create graphics, in which drawing play a dominant role. Solid pastel due to its composition is indispensable at the initial stage of work, because when using it, you do not have to worry that it will crumble or stain paper.

Color maps of pastel colors are much more complete than watercolors and oil and often include hundreds of different shades.

Durability

The resistance of pastel colors is quite high. Pictures painted by them do not deteriorate, do not darken and do not turn yellow over time. This effect is achieved by the purity of the colors, although there is still one negative impact factor - the effect of bright light, in bright light, over time, the colors fade, so it is not recommended to store works written in pastel in brightly lit rooms.

Soft pastel

The soft pastel is friable, it easily lays on paper, leaving colored spots. This effect is due to the fact that the soft pastel contains a small amount of gum arabic, which is the solid foundation of pastel paint. Soft pastel colors usually take the form of cylindrical oblong stems of various shades.

Soft pastel bars are offered either individually or as a set in which paints are grouped by gamut (A), there is also a superior pastel (B), which has increased softness, and its assortment is most fully represented if the bars or crayons are prismatic (not round) form, then it means a solid pastel or crayons. They are sold both individually and in boxes (C).

Large pastel

In addition to the difference between soft and hard pastels, there are no other types of it, although pastel bars produced by different manufacturers really differ from each other in terms of hardness. Due to the softness and lightness with which it rests on paper, high quality pastels are produced in the form of bars of the “extra” size, whose size eliminates the need for the artist to have several small bars of the same color on hand.

There are also the so-called pastel pencils, which are the sticks of solid pastel in a wooden frame. They strongly resemble ordinary pencils, they can also be sharpened and used.

As a rule, the range of pastels in sets contains infrequently used colors.

Range

The color palette of oil and watercolor paints presented on the shelves, for all the breadth of their scales, does not differ in such variety as the color range of pastels. All this is because pastel painting is based on paints almost entirely consisting of one pigment. The practice of mixing colors in pastel painting is not recommended and, in fact, is not used by artists. Indeed, the need for mixing paints disappears due to the availability of paints in a wide variety of shades. When selling paint, they are grouped in any way, and often the aesthetic principle will prevail, rather than practical considerations. On sale you can find “landscape” sets, which are distinguished by a large gamut of blue and green shades, or “portrait” ones - their gamut gravitates to tones close to the natural color of a person’s skin (umbra, ocher, sienna, gray and all warm tones,which are prone to brown gamma). Fortunately, you can purchase not only certain sets, but also individual bars of the colors required in the work.

Pastel practice: Materials for pastel painting