Pastel technique secrets

Pastel Painting Secrets pastels made easy

By Emma Ralph

© 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.

www.paintingwithpastels.com

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval system without express written, dated and signed permission from the author. DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES: The information presented herein represents the view of the author as of the date of publication. Because of the rate with which conditions change, the author reserves the right to alter and update her opinion based on the new conditions. The book is for informational purposes only. While every attempt has been made to verify the information provided in this book, neither the author nor her affiliates/partners assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. If advice concerning legal or related matters is needed, the services of a fully qualified professional should be sought.



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TABLE OF CONTENTS CONT ENTS Chapter 1: Introduction To Pastels How Are Pastels Made? How Pastels Work Getting Started

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Chapter 2: The Tools You Will Will Need What To Work On Tools For Blending Tools For Correcting Fixative Other Tools

Page 10

Chapter 3: The Pastels Soft Pastels Hard Pastels Chalk Pastels Oil Pastels Pastel Crayons Pastel Pencils Water Soluble Pastels Soft Pastels Versus Oil Pastels Choosing Your Pastels

Page 18

Chapter 4: Different Types Types Of Paper The Paper Tint or color Papers Other Surfaces Making Your Own

Page 26

Chapter 5: Setting Up Your Work Space Lighting Indoor Setting Outdoor Setting

Page 30

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Chapter 6: Keeping It Clean The Dust How Toxic Are Pastels? Is It Safe To Work With Pastels? Wearing Gloves Keeping Hands Clean

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Chapter 7: Looking After Your Pastels Storage Of Your Pastels Traveling With Pastels Keep Pastels Clean While Working Cleaning Pastels

Page 35

Chapter 8: Techniques Blending Hatching & Cross-Hatching Shading Scumbling Feathering Pointillism Dusting Glazing Side Stroke Other Techniques Some Common Mistakes

Page 39

Chapter 9: All About Colors Primary Colors Secondary Colors Tertiary Colors Color Wheel Complementary Colors Split Primaries Warm & Cool Colors Colorful Grays & Shadows Working With Colors Mixing By Overlaying Colors

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Chapter 10: Composition The Focal Point The Golden Ratio The Rule Of Thirds The Elements

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Chapter 11: The Importance Of Value Learn The Values Are The Values Varied? Too Much Middle Value Value Relative To Other Value How To Think About Value Organizing

Page 56

Chapter 12: Underpainting Underpainting With Pastel Underpainting With Water Color Underpainting With Gouache Or Acrylic Underpainting With Oil Paint Effects Experiment With Underpainting

Page 60

Chapter 13: Using Photos Why Shouldn’t You Use Photos? A Reference Photo Not Art Photos Can Lie Painting From Other People’s Photos Making The Painting Better Than The Photo Play Around With Photos

Page 65

Chapter 14: How To Make Pastels Cheap Pastel Recipe True Pastel Recipe When Pastels Shatter

Page 69

Chapter 15: Storing/Framing Your Work Storing Pastel Paintings Using Fixative At The End

Page 72

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Protection Without Mat With Mat Mounting Board Framing Your Painting How To Frame (With Mat) Protect You Art Without The Expense

Tips

Page 79

Different Brands

Page 82

Conclusion

Page 85

Resources

Page 86



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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO PASTELS Hello and welcome to the world of pastels! Pastels are a fantastic medium due to their simplicity and versatility. To work with pastels all you need is paper (or another textured surface), your fingers and the pastel sticks themselves. Pastels combine the speed and convenience of a drawing medium with the intense color saturation of paint (this is why pastels are referred to more often as a painting medium than a drawing medium, and why this book will refer to ‘paintings’ rather than ‘drawings’). Whether you’re a novice in the artistic world or an old pro in a different medium, you’ll love pastels – for all sorts of reasons. In terms of subjects, pastels are great for portrait work, whether it’s a preliminary study or the finished article, and they’re particularly good at allowing the landscape artist to capture fleeting details such as clouds and skies. Pastels are a very ‘immediate’ medium; both quick and forgiving of mistakes. Among artists, pastels are renowned for their vibrancy, luminosity, and intensity of color. They’re also one of the easiest mediums to work with. You don’t need to prepare your surface before you begin, and you don’t need to use chemicals to clean up afterwards. Historically, pastels suited the Impressionist temperament, due to their spontaneity, freshness, richness of color relationships, portability (good for working outside), ability to capture the fleeting light and the fleeting moment, and ability to capture a sense of physical movement of light and breeze. In terms of technique, pastels as a medium are unlike any other. They lend themselves to blending and layering of colors and tones in order to build up to the finished image.



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Be aware that the word “pastels” refers to a broad range of tools. Soft pastels are the most commonly used, and are what most people mean when they talk about pastels, but hard pastels and oil pastels also exist. Pastel pencils are great for detailed work and are often used in combination with soft pastels. Unlike some artistic mediums, pastel painting is a ‘dirty’ medium that frequently involves the use of hands and fingers in creating effects on the paper. In fact, many people liken it to adult finger painting! There’s also no right or wrong way to use pastels – the only important thing is that you have fun while you’re doing it.

HOW ARE PASTELS MADE? Pastels usually are made from three ingredients: pigment; filler, and binder. The pigment provides the color, the filler (which is usually clay or white chalk) provides opacity (i.e. it makes the pastel less translucent), and can be varied in amount to produce different shades of pastels, and the binder makes it all stick together. The pigments used in making pastels are the same pigments that are used in making oil and watercolor paints. Pastels are made by mixing these three ingredients together to form a paste, which, incidentally, is where pastels got their name from. This paste is moistened and forced through a machine that shapes the paste into long cylinders. These pastel cylinders are then cut, shaped, and dried. In the past, making pastels was a very labor-intensive process, as the materials from which the pigment was made had to be mixed and ground by hand. Now ready-made pastels in a huge range of colors are readily available from any art supply store. Note that some pastels are made from just one ingredient: pigment. These 100% pigment pastels are highly regarded, but on the downside they are soft and expensive.



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HOW PASTELS WORK The mechanism of painting with pastels is simple: when a pastel stick is drawn across a textured surface, such as art paper, it crumbles slightly, releasing particles of pigment. The grain of the paper (i.e. the tiny ridges, troughs and bumps on its surface) provides the necessary grip to hold the pigment particles (this property is referred to as tooth), and so color is left on the surface. Often loose pigment dust will also be left on the surface, but this can simply be gently shaken off.

GETTING STARTED If you’re keen to get started making pastel paintings, you’ll need to acquire a set of pastels. Before you go to your art supply store, be aware that pastels are grouped according to how soft they are. Soft pastels are better for shading and blending, but hard pastels are better for fine lines and details. It’s useful to have both, but it’s the soft pastels that are the more useful of the two. Your first set of pastels should be in a medium-soft grade. Unless you absolutely can’t afford to, it’s worth paying a little more for a set that aren’t the absolute cheapest available. There is a brief look at a few of the brands on the market at the end of this book. If your art supply store carries a lot of brands and you don’t know which to buy, try a set of Rembrandts. Rembrandt pastels come in a wide variety of colors, are highly regarded among pastel artists, and aren’t as expensive as some brands. They’re also easy to get hold of; most art supply store will stock them.

For more information on buying pastels, see ‘Choosing Your Pastels’, in Chapter 3.



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CHAPTER 2 THE TOOLS YOU WILL NEED

WHAT TO WORK ON Easels Aside from the pastels themselves, the most important equipment consideration for the pastel artist is what to use to support your masterpieces-in-the-making while you are working on them. An easel is an obvious choice. Unsurprisingly, there are a massive range of easels available today, and an equally wide range of price points – you can pay anywhere from less than $20 up to several thousand dollars. One useful feature of any easel is that it allows you to take a step back from your work-in-progress to get a better idea of how it balances. And, of course, there’s nothing like an easel to make you look the part of the artist! When choosing an easel, pay attention to how stable it is. Particularly if you intend to work plein air (i.e. outside) you don’t want to risk your easel falling over and landing your artwork in the dirt. Consider whether your chosen easel will catch the wind if a breeze picks up. Also consider, of course, size. If you want to have the option of producing large pieces, you’ll need an easel that can accommodate them. If you don’t know yet how big you want to work, buy one size bigger than you think you might need so that you have room to go larger as your confidence and ambition grows. While most easels are designed primarily for painting, one option is a special-purpose pastel easel. The key feature of these is that you can tilt them slightly forward, so that excess pastel dust falls off the



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surface and onto the floor below, rather than running down your surface and marking areas of it as it does so. While easels are popular, some pastel artists don’t use an easel, preferring instead to work on a surface that is closer to perpendicular with the ground, such as a drafting table. Tables Drafting tables, such as those commonly used by architects, are usually taller than normal tables. This is to enable you to work comfortably standing up, which in turn makes it easy to take a step back and get an overview of how your work is progressing. If you’d rather sit, get a high stool to go with your table. This is more comfortable for close, detailed work, so it’s good to have the option to sit even if you normally stand (contrary to popular belief, suffering for your art is entirely optional!). A useful feature of drafting tables is that they are tilted, or have the option of being tilted. This allows excess particles to ‘roll’ off the surface, and collect at the bottom of the table in the pencil groove, from where you can easily wipe it off. However, you should work from the top down when you’re using a slanted surface like a drafting table so that the pastel doesn’t mark areas you’ve already worked on as it is rolling down your surface. The simplest option for supporting your artworks while you work on them is an ordinary, flat table. If you just use a table you already have then this is obviously the cheapest option. If you feel that you need an angled surface but don’t want to invest in a drafting table, you can buy drawing boards (see below) that you can simply place on an existing table. These come with little rubber feet, so that the top edge of the board is raised. Drawing Boards A drawing board is essentially just a large, solid, smooth surface on which to fix your paper. If you use an easel, you’ll need a drawing board as well, but they can also be used on their own. A drawing board can be as simple as a piece of heavy cardboard, plywood or Masonite, but wood is the luxury option.



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Purpose-made drawing boards are of course available from art supply stores, but a much cheaper option is to make your own. When you’re buying materials for your drawing board, think about what size you’ll need, keeping in mind that full-sized pastel paper is 30 x 24in (76 x 60cm). If you’re going to use your drawing board with an easel, ensure that the easel is sturdy enough to support it. If you work on paper in a pad rather than loose sheets, a drawing board is not obligatory, as the cardboard backing of the pad itself serves a similar function. You’ll need to hold your paper to your drawing board with something; metal ‘bulldog’ clips work on masonite, and for cardboard or wood you have the option to use push pins (one in each corner is best). If you use a drawing board, a good idea is to put some extra sheets of paper (newsprint is fine) between the sheet you are working on and the board, to create a softer and more yielding surface.

TOOLS FOR BLENDING One of the best things about working with pastels is that it’s very easy to blend colors after they’re on the paper. This can be done with just your fingers or the sides of your hands, but another option is to use a specific tool. Using a tool will leave you with cleaner hands! Most blending tools are free (or practically free), and some you can make yourself. Stumps And Tortillons Paper stumps are just paper, tightly rolled so that there’s a point at one end. Tortillons are the same as stumps, but rolled looser. This makes them more effective for fixing and short blending. Fixing is pressing the pastel into the paper so that it doesn’t smudge, and/or so that it has a sharper, more defined edge (this is a technique particularly used in detail work). Short blending is blending colors in a small area; usually just two colors along the border where they meet. Tortillons are also used to soften the edge of an area of color, so that a transition is not as sharp.



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Tortillons and paper stumps get dirty and worn down quickly with use. When this happens, just unroll the paper and reroll to a fresh, clean point.

In addition to blending, tortillons and paper stumps are also used for highlighting (i.e. removing color from an area of block color to represent something bright). It’s worth having stumps/tortillons in several different sizes and lengths (or just make them to size as you need them). Note that stumps and tortillons work best with pastel pencils. They can be used with soft pastels as well, but they are of only limited use with hard pastels, as hard pastels don’t blend easily. If you are using pastel pencils, you can color areas by first using two or more pencils with (for example) a cross-hatching technique, then using stumps to blend them together. Styrofoam Styrofoam, in the form of packing pellets or similar, is a perfectly serviceable option as a blending tool, and (if you’ve ever received a package in the mail) is free.

Q-Tips (Cotton Buds) Another blending tool, Q-tips are particularly useful for fine detail work.



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Color Carvers A color carver is more or less just a pencil eraser on a paintbrush handle, but it’s actually a very useful tool. Color carvers can be used to fix your pastels (i.e. press them into the paper), and are very effective at this (better than tortillons), and can also be used to spread pastel that has been thickly laid on your paper – a bit like a paintbrush. Be careful though, as if you push too hard color carvers act like an eraser normally would (NB: if you want to erase something, use a kneaded eraser, not a color carver).

TOOLS FOR CORRECTING No matter how careful you are, you’ll definitely need correcting tools. This is not because you’ll definitely make mistakes (though there’s no shame if you do), but because pastel, by its nature, doesn’t stay just where it’s put – making clean-ups inevitable. Kneaded (Putty) Erasers For corrections and clean-ups, the best tool to use is a kneaded eraser. Kneaded erasers are made of putty, meaning that they’re soft and easily pinched into whatever shape you need, including fine points and thin edges. This allows you to clean small areas of your paper without affecting whatever is nearby. They can also be used for blending, and again the ability to shape them easily is useful for this. Kneaded erasers are particularly useful for fine highlighting, such as used for individual hairs in portrait work. Once the point or edge of your kneaded eraser becomes dirty, just remold the eraser so that you get a clean part again. Hard erasers are best avoided, as it’s too easy for them to damage your paper. Kneaded erasers can be purchased in any art store. If you can’t get hold of one, a product such as Blu-Tack does more or less the same thing (it’s often the case with art supplies that everyday items are nearly as good and far cheaper than something made specifically for the task!).



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Brushes Paintbrushes are a versatile tool and can be used for both blending and correction work. Soft and hard brushes are both useful, depending on the type of pastels you are using (pastel pencils, soft pastels, or hard pastels) and what you want to achieve. Soft brushes are usually used to blend or feather one color into another. Blending with a soft brush will give your blending a corresponding soft look. The difference between using a tortillon (or stump) for blending and using a brush is that a tortillon tends to push the pastel into the paper, while a brush lifts and carries the particles. This means that brush blending is more gradual than the blending effect you get with a tortillon. Along with traditional brushes (i.e. those with bristles), sponge-head brushes, such as those used for stenciling, are also useful. They can be used to burnish color onto your paper, and to remove color, for corrections and highlighting. A stiff bristle brush, such as those normally used for oil painting, is useful for getting rid of excess particles in situations where precision isn’t necessary, such as where the particles have drifted onto white areas of your paper. For this purpose any old brush will do; you don’t need a new brush if it will only be used for corrections like these.

FIXATIVE Fixative sprays are used to coat finished pastel artworks. Their purpose is: 1) to fix the pastel particles to the paper, so that they don’t fall off, get knocked off, smudge, or smear when the work is handled, and 2) to prevent dust from adhering to the surface in a way that’s impossible to remove without removing the pastels as well. Fixative sprays are readily available from art supply stores, and are inexpensive. It must be said that the question of whether using a fixer is a good idea is an area of some debate in the pastel art world. Many people choose not to use them. The reasons for this are several. First,



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fixatives are not 100% effective. Even a pastel work that is well sprayed with fixer will still smudge to a degree if handled roughly. Second, spraying pastels with fixer inevitably changes how they look. Pastels sprayed with fixer look duller than those without, losing some of their sparkle. Even if it’s not a dramatic change, it’s worth considering this cost before you decide to use it. Aside from its use on finished works, fixer can also be used while you’re still working on a piece in order to restore the tooth of the paper. If you’ve reached a point where the paper just won’t take any more pastel, spray the area with fixer and you’ll find that you can continue adding layers. If you decide not to use fixer, the only alternative if you want to keep your works pristine is to have them framed behind glass. The matboard will keep the paper from touching the glass, and the glass will keep out the dust. Keep in mind that because of the need to handle it with care, framing an unfixed pastel is difficult, and for this reason is a job best left to a professional. For more on this topic see Chapter 15 Storing/Framing Your Work.

OTHER TOOLS Pastel Sharpening Tools Often you’ll want to sharpen your pastels to a fine edge or point for detail work. You can easily do this using either a craft knife or medium grade sandpaper. If you use sandpaper you can control the process a little more than if you use a craft knife. The best way to do it is to glue a piece of sandpaper (say about 4 x 1in) to a piece of wood or thick cardboard. Now you have a flat surface that you can rub your pastels on to sharpen them. If you’re careful, the pastel dust that comes



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off when you sharpen with sandpaper can be saved and used for undertones before you start your pastel painting (apply it with a sponge brush). Keep in mind that softer pastels are prone to breaking/crumbling, so sharpen them with care. You can sharpen pastel pencils as you would an ordinary ‘lead’ (graphite) pencil, using a good pencil sharpener. Miscellaneous Tools In additional to using one for sharpening pastels, a utility or craft knife is also useful for cutting your paper. A chamois cloth can be used to wet-blend pastels. When clean and dry they are also useful for removing excess pigment. This is a strange one, but a small mirror can be useful in reviewing your work. Turn your back to your easel and look at your work-inprogress in the mirror over your shoulder. For whatever reason, this is an effective way of getting a fresh look at your work and seeing where it needs more work. Graphite drawing pencils are useful for sketching out your work before you start to work with your pastels. They’re made from graphite mixed with clay, and like ordinary pencils, are graded by how hard or soft they are. It’s useful to have a few in various grades of softness on hand. Conté sticks (also known as Conté pencils or crayons) are another drawing medium. They’re similar to pastels, but they’re harder and have a greater pigment density. They’re also square rather than circular in cross-section. Their shape and hardness makes Conté sticks better for detailed and cross-hatching work than pastels.



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CHAPTER 3 THE PASTELS

One of the great things about working with pastels is the wonderful variety of colors and brands to choose from. Every conceivable color and tone seems to be represented. On the other hand, all that choice can be a little overwhelming! Further confusing things is that fact that every manufacturer of pastels labels their colors differently…and some don’t label them at all! You’ll come across boxes of pastels where your only option is to simply look for the color that you want to use. Not only that, there are also the different types of pastel (soft, hard, wax and oil) to consider. And even within those types, each brand varies slightly in texture from others that go by the same name. You won’t be able to learn about those differences other than through trying them yourself. Finally, pastel sticks come in different sizes. Should you want to, you buy your pastels in half-length, full-length, chunky, thin or jumbo sizes. As you can see, there’s a world of choice for the budding pastel artist when it comes to buying pastels. There’s no substitute for trying things for yourself, but this section will provide you with a basic understanding of the various types of pastels, as this is the most important distinction.



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SOFT PASTELS Soft pastels are the ‘original’ form of the medium, and are what most people are referring to when they talk about pastels. They are the most popular of the types. Soft pastels contain a higher ratio of pigment-to-binder than other pastels, which makes the color they produce on paper more saturated and intense. The higher concentration of pigment also makes them softer (as the name suggests!) and prone to crumbling. Because of their unique characteristics, soft pastels perform like and are thought of more as a painting medium than a drawing medium. It is very often the rich colors and painterly qualities of soft pastels that attract people to pastel painting as a medium in the first place. Some soft pastels are composed entirely of pigment (i.e. no binder or filler is added). Artists who work with soft pastels generally regard these as the best, however, 100% pigment pastels are expensive – around US$4-7 per individual pastel stick. Brands that make 100% pure pigment pastels include Unison, Sennelier, Schminke and Terry Ludwig. A cheaper (but still good quality) 100% pigment brand is Nupastel.

HARD PASTELS In contrast to soft pastels, hard pastels contain less pigment and more binder. This makes them harder and therefore better for making crisp, precise marks and lines. Hard pastels are generally used primarily for preliminary sketching and for detail work. The colors produced by hard pastels are not as intense as those produced by soft pastels. It’s common for pastel artists to use both hard and soft pastels in one artwork. This typically follows the following pattern: 1) Hard pastels are used to sketch and layout the artwork; 2) Soft pastels are laid over the hard pastels, filling in and providing the color; and then 3) Hard pastels are used again for the fine details.



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Note that while the technique of layering soft pastels over hard pastels is effective, the reverse is not, as hard pastels will scrape soft pastels away.

CHALK PASTELS Chalk pastels are, as the name suggests, a chalk-based medium. They contain less pigment than other types of pastels, create a lot of dust/mess when used, and are significantly less expensive than soft pastels. Chalk pastels are mentioned here for completeness, but as they aren’t much better quality than blackboard chalk, they’re best avoided. Even if they’re cheap, they’re usually not worth it.

OIL PASTELS Oil pastels use oil as a binder rather than gum. This makes oil pastels dust-free, but gives them a soft, almost buttery texture. It also makes them highly sensitive to temperature – so much so that they typically soften when they are being used just from the heat from your fingers. Like soft pastels, oil pastels produce very vibrant colors. They also have the advantage of versatility, in that they can be used on canvas, paper and board equally effectively. They can be also be applied thickly, impasto style (this is the style of oil painting where the paint is laid on so thickly that the knife- or brush-strokes are visible). Oil pastels can be used with turpentine like oil paints, to produce a wash or glaze, and they also combine well with other mediums, such as oil paints and watercolors.

PASTEL CRAYONS Pastel crayons are half-way between soft and hard pastels. They are of medium hardness, which means they can be used both for the painting-type techniques commonly used with soft pastels, and for the fine lines and detail normally associated with hard pastels. Pastel crayons are a compromise, but their advantage is versatility and durability. This makes them a favorite among pastel artists who want



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to work outdoors and need a robust medium that is compact and can be transported easily. One downside is that they aren’t available in as large a range of colors as soft pastels.

PASTEL PENCILS Pastel pencils are like a hybrid of pencils and crayons; they have the consistency of a soft crayon encased in wood. Pastel pencils are perfect for detail work and can be blended to an extent. Most pastel artists will want to acquire a set of hard pastels or pastel pencils for fine work.

WATER SOLUBLE PASTELS Water soluble pastels are something of an ingenious invention, as they can be used both wet and dry. Dry, they can be used to draw with. Then you can brush over the drawing with water to create watercolor effects. Water soluble pastels are also available in the form of pastel pencils. The range of colors that water soluble pastels are available in is rather limited, however.

SOFT PASTELS VERSUS OIL PASTELS While soft pastels are the most popular type of pastels, oil pastels clearly have their advantages, and artists who use soft pastels are often curious about what oil pastels can offer. As such it’s worth discussing the relative pros and cons in some detail. One advantage of soft pastels is that you can get by with a looser coverage of them on your surface. It takes longer to fill an area of your surface with oil pastels, and this can make the difference between finishing an 18 x 24in piece of work inside two hours, and struggling to finish an 11 x 14in paper in the same time. This is particularly significant when you’re working outside and have only limited time to finish a piece.



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Also, soft pastels are water soluble, which means that large areas of color can be easily blocked in using a wet brush. A similar effect with oil pastels requires the use of turpentine. The water solubility of soft pastels also makes cleaning up after using them much easier. An upside to oil pastels is that they’re dust free. Anyone who has used soft pastels knows that loose pastel dust is a continual annoyance when using them. It ‘comes with the territory’, but that doesn’t mean it’s not annoying, particularly when it marks an adjacent area of color on your surface. Oil pastels are also not prone to smudging like soft pastels are. Oil pastels can be used on a wider range of surfaces than soft pastels. This is because they aren’t as sensitive to tooth (again, tooth refers to the ability of the paper to grab and hold particles of pigment). This can open up many new creative possibilities. On the other hand, because oil pastels are slightly translucent, surfaces which are other than white in color can make colors appear dull. The sensitivity of oil pastels to heat means that they must be handled with more care than soft pastels. For example, they can’t be left in a car during hot weather. They have even been known to melt and fall apart while in use if it’s a particularly hot day and you’re working outdoors. A final difference between soft pastels and oil pastels is how they act when used for layering. When used for layering, oil pastels tend to collect a lot of the color that is already on the surface. This necessitates cleaning the tips frequently during use, and usually at the end of the session as well. Overall, while differences exist between soft pastels and oil pastels, the artist can use them both in the same way, and the results are generally indistinguishable from one another. For artists who don’t like dust and don’t want to work large, oil pastels may be the better choice.



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CHOOSING YOUR PASTELS If you are ready to buy your first pastels, the first thing you’ll need to decide is whether to start out with a set or buy them individually; all the major manufacturers of artist-quality pastels sell their wares both individually and in ready-made sets. Buying A Set Buying your first pastels in a set has the advantage of convenience – you don’t need to make any decisions about what colors to select, you can just pick a brand and accept the manufacturer’s wisdom about what colors are important enough to include in the set. If you do buy a ready-made set you’ll inevitably find over time that there are some colors you use a lot and some you hardly use at all. Greens and blues tend to go more quickly than bright reds and oranges, for example. However, you can always replace the ones you use up individually, and the ones you don’t use very often won’t go anywhere – unlike paint, pastels never perish. Ready-made boxes of pastel sticks range in size from just six sticks to large boxes containing the entire range (150+ sticks). If you’re just starting out, look for a happy medium of about 30. As mentioned in the introduction, a good brand which is not too expensive and which is available almost everywhere is Rembrandt. A set of Rembrandt pastels would get any novice pastel painter off to a great start. Buying Individually Buying your pastels individually allows you more control over what colors you have. Also, if you start small (10 sticks is enough – novice pastel painters often make the mistake of buying too many colors at the outset), it may be a cheaper approach, as you’ll only be paying for the colors you like and will use. If you’re serious about pastels, a set of between 30 and 40 is about how many you’ll eventually need to have a good range of colors (see below), but you can add to your first 10 one at a time according to your needs and build up to this kind of number slowly.



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Here are some suggestions for your first 10 pastel sticks. These are aimed at giving you a set of mid-tones (for more information on colors, see Chapter 9 ‘All About Colors’)

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Warm red (scarlet lake, permanent red, or poppy red); Cold red (carmine, alizarin crimson, or madder lake); Orange (mid orange or permanent orange); Cold yellow (lemon yellow); Warm green (permanent green or phthalo green); Cold green (blue green or turquoise); Cold blue (cerulean blue); Warm blue (French ultramarine or ultramarine deep); Cold violet (ultramarine violet or blue violet); and Warm violet (red violet or quinacrindone violet).

Adding To Your Collection Once you’ve been using soft pastels for some time and you’re sure you want to continue with pastel painting, it will be time to get some hard pastels to go along with your collection of soft pastels. As discussed above (‘Hard Pastels’), harder pastels are better for your initial sketching and for detail work. Also, if you know that you want to focus on a certain type of subject, such as portraits or landscapes, you’ll probably want at some stage to buy a targeted selection of pastels just for that purpose. The leading manufacturers sell targeted selections in sets, or again you can buy the sticks individually. Finally, and again once you’ve been using pastels for a while and feel comfortable with the medium, it’s worth sampling a few different brands of pastels other than the one you started with. Characteristics such as hardness differ between manufacturers, and you might find that there’s a particular brand which suits your personal style better – many pastel artists find that they prefer one brand over the others. The cheapest way to do this is to buy just a couple of sticks from each



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manufacturer, mix them into your collection, and see what you think thi nk of them over time. If do you find a brand you like better, you can then just buy its pastels one at a time to replace your existing pastels when they are used up. If you don’t have an art supply store near where you live, you should be able to buy pastels online very easily. One last thing: whenever you buy pastels, pay attention to how ‘lightfast’ (this is the property of ‘not fading over time’) the pigments that they contain are. It’s possible that you (or your descendants!) will still want something you painted today to be as bright and colorful in 30 years time, 50 years time, or more, so take the time to investigate any claims the manufacturer makes about the light-fastness of their pastels.



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CHAPTER 4 DIFFERENT TYPES OF PAPER Secondary in importance only to the pastels themselves is the pastel pas tel painter’s choice of painting surface, of which paper is by far the most popular choice (there’s more on alterative surfaces below). It doesn’t end there however, because when it comes to pastel painting, paper is not just paper! Different papers differ in tooth; texture; color; tint; toughness; archival quality; flexibility; availability, and cost. Tooth is an important variable, as tooth determines how much pastel the paper can hold before it is ‘choked’ with pigment and can’t hold any more. A paper that doesn’t have much tooth might only be good for sketching, while one with ample tooth will be necessary if you plan to do a lot of layering. For this reason more tooth is generally better, though sometimes strong tooth will make it harder to record fine detail on the paper.

THE PAPER Pastel artists are spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing a paper. There are numerous manufacturers of pastel papers, and most make several kinds of paper with different levels of tooth and different textures. Some papers have a velvety texture, which gives your work a very smooth finish. However, these tend to be low in tooth. At the other end of the spectrum you’ll find papers that are akin to sandpaper-indisguise – in fact, some artists actually just buy (fine) sandpaper to paint on! It tends to be hit-and-miss, but can give a strong impact, and it even comes with a background color. Just don’t try to blend pastels with your fingers when working with sandpaper; you might lose your fingerprints. Rough-surfaced watercolor paper is a good choice, providing enough tooth in a surface that is still gentle.



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Weight is another consideration. Weight basically determines how robust the paper will be in the face of rough treatment. If your style is to work, rework, and blend your pastels, then of course you should consider a heavier paper. Similarly if your paper is i s going to get wet at some point, then heavier is better. Paper of at least 175gsm would be a good starting point here. Specialty pastel paper is of course widely available. It comes in a wide variety of colors, from neutral and pastel to intense and dark colors. You can buy it in pads or single sheets. Pads come in 9 x 12in and 12 x 18in, while single sheets are usually usual ly 18 x 24in or 19 x 25in. Three good brands are Canson Ingres, Mi Teintes, and Strathmore charcoal/pastel paper.

TINT OR COLOR PAPERS When choosing a paper for your pastel paintings, give special consideration to the color. The tint of your paper will significantly affect the ‘mood’ or the ‘atmosphere’ of your work. This is first of all because pastels never totally cover a surface – there will always be slight gaps where the background shows through. It’s also because the color of the paper will subtly affect the colors that are laid down on top of them. The paper is a ‘base coat’, if you like.

As you can see by the above examples the same pastels are used on both white and black paper, giving a very different result in color. Briefly, a red-brown paper might be a good choice if you want to give your painting a warm glow, and to make light yellows and creams really ‘vibrate’. On the other hand, pale blue or gray paper will help establish a subdued mood that’s perfect for something like a winter landscape.



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OTHER SURFACES While paper is the chosen surface for most people, pastels can in fact be used on any surface that has the requisite properties. The surface must be dry and smooth, but with enough tooth to catch and hold the pastel pigments. If you want to try something different, archival textured panels designed for use with aqua and oil media fit the bill.

MAKING YOUR OWN If you have the time, making your own surface for your pastel work is not difficult. You’ll need a ground mixture mi xture composed of binder, grit, and (optionally) toner, and you’ll a need a substrate (this is the surface that the ground mixture will be adhered to). When choosing a substrate, you’ll want to consider both the archival properties and the strength of your material. Heavy cardboard and hardboard are favorite choices. If you want to use a thin material, such as paper, apply some binder to the back of it so that it’s i t’s less likely to buckle or warp. Watercolor and printmaking papers made of 100% cotton-rag are good choices, or for something rigid, try woodfiber hardboards or Gatorboard (seal the surface of both of these with binder before you use them). Grit is, of course, is the important imp ortant part of your ground mixture and what will provide your substrate with tooth. Either pumice or Rottenstone powder are usually the grits of choice. Pumice comes in varying degrees of coarseness: 2F; 3F, and 4F are the most widely used. Experiment to see what works best for you. Pumice can be b e found in most hardware stores and many art supply stores. Marble dust (calcium carbonate), also available at most art supply stores, can be used when a softer grit surface is desired. The binder is what makes the grit adhere to the substrate. Acrylic polymer is the best choice, being strong, flexible, and quick drying. Acrylic gesso produces a white surface (good for underpainting techniques), while acrylic painting medium produces a clear one. You can use the binder either undiluted, or mixed mi xed with a little water to make it thinner and smoother.



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If you want to, you can add toner to your mixture of binder and grit in order to change its color. You can add any acrylic color you like, or mix colors together to get exactly what you want. Once you have your ingredients, begin by mixing a cup of binder with 3 tablespoons of grit. You can thin this with water, but remember that if you add too much water the grit might not adhere properly. Test your mixture and add more grit and/or binder to suit your needs. Some artists apply their grit mixture to the substrate with a brush, incorporating the texture of the brush strokes into the finished work. A smaller brush will give more texture, whereas a larger one will give you a more even application.



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CHAPTER 5 SETTING UP YOUR WORK SPACE If you have the room, your pastel painting will benefit from a space in your home that’s dedicated to it. Your workspace doesn’t have to be a large area, as long as it’s big enough that you can leave your supplies out between sessions without them getting in anyone’s way. You’re much more likely to sit down and paint when inspiration strikes if you don’t have to unpack and set up your materials first. This also makes it practical for you to sit down and work for just a few minutes at a time – a good way to fit a little art into a busy lifestyle. What your workspace looks like will depend a lot on whether you decide to work on an easel, a drafting table, an ordinary table, or something else (for more, see ‘What To Work On’, above). Don’t forget that if your drawing board or other support isn’t angled, loose pastel dust will accumulate on it, and if it is angled, pastel dust will run down it and collect at the bottom, or fall off and onto the floor. If you’re working in a carpeted area, you’ll definitely need to protect it with a dustsheet, no matter what other system you use for catching the dust. A sheet of canvas or an old shower curtain work well and are inexpensive. In your workspace you’ll need space for your easel or other support, and room for your materials. Keep your pastels in a tray, or better yet, a trolley, so that you can easily move them into the best position while you work. You will of course need your chosen support, and a chair or stool (unless you always work standing up). Optional but helpful extras are a shelf for reference books, a chest you can store materials and paper in, and a source of ventilation, such as a window or a fan. Try to keep your workspace neat and tidy even if it’s big enough that you don’t really need to. Most people find that a neat workspace allows them to concentrate better – there is less to distract you.



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LIGHTING The importance of lighting in your workspace can’t be overstated – it’s so important it gets its own heading! Ideally, you want adequate natural light falling on both your painting surface and on your pastel sticks, to enable you to accurately evaluate colors on the page and as you reach for them. If natural light isn’t a possibility, or there isn’t enough of it (and also for when you want to work at night), you’ll need to add artificial light. It’s important that your artificial light is the right color, so use ‘color-corrected’ fluorescent bulbs – these provide a white light that mimics natural light. Avoid incandescent bulbs, as they are yellow toned. To put the bulbs in, lamps on flexible arms that you can move into the perfect position are best.

OUTDOOR SETTING Working outdoors makes a nice change if you usually work indoors, and of course it’s virtually a necessity if you want to do landscapes. However, it requires a little planning ahead so that you aren’t caught short in the great outdoors without something you need. The best idea is to make a list of what you need to remember to take with you, leave it in your gear bag, and check it before every outing to ensure that you have everything listed. Your list might look something like this: •

• • • • • • •

Drawing board (NB: use something lightweight, such as foamboard) Paper Pastels, Charcoal, pastel pencils Easel (again, a lightweight one) Bulldog clips Baby wipes Plastic tray for pastels A can of fixative spray

• •

• • •


Sketchbook and a pencil A plastic bag large enough to cover your drawing board (use it to cover your work at the end of the day to protect it on the journey home) Disposable (latex) gloves A stool A bag large enough to put it all in


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CHAPTER 6 KEEPING IT CLEAN There’s no two ways about it: working with pastels is messy . Every time you draw a pastel across your paper, some of the pigment will catch and hold, and some will crumble off the pastel but just sit on the surface of the paper as pastel dust. This is an unavoidable fact of life for the pastel artist. Exactly how to get rid of that pastel dust without it causing a mess, without breathing it in, and without it marking adjacent areas of your surface, is one of the main headaches that pastel artists need to deal with. Luckily, there are plenty of good options for doing so. Of primary concern for most pastel artists is ensuring that the dust does not mark adjacent areas of color; if you aren’t careful then (for example) adjacent black areas and white areas will turn each other gray.

THE DUST There are a number of different strategies of dealing with the inevitable pastel dust created by working with pastels. Some people periodically blow on their paper to remove dust, but a better method is to face your paper towards the ground and gently tap/shake it. This method doesn’t spread the dust like blowing can, and also won’t create as much airborne dust for you to breathe in. To catch falling dust particles while you are working at an easel, a method many swear by is to make a V-shape out of newspaper, and tape it to the bottom of the easel. Alternatively a wet paper towel does the same job, and has the advantage that dust will stick to it. Or, if your easel can do this, you can tilt your surface forward so that it’s facing slightly towards the floor, and just also the dust to settle on your dustsheet on the floor.



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You also might want to consider buying an electronic air purifier (one with an ionizer) for your workspace. The ionizer discharges negative ions which attach to pastel dust in the air, making it easier for the purifier to trap them. This means less airborne dust, making cleanup easier and also lessening the amount of pastel dust that you will inhale while you work (see below).

HOW TOXIC ARE PASTELS? Whether or not your pastels are toxic will depend on their specific ingredients, and this depends on their brand and when they were made. Certainly in the past some pastels contained cobalt, chromium or cadmium, all of which are toxic substances. Most manufacturers have removed these from their pastels, though some pastels still contain them. If you’re in any doubt about the pastels you work with, consult the manufacturer of your pastels directly for more information.

IS IT SAFE TO WORK WITH PASTELS? Pastels are unlikely to cause any significant health concerns even if dust from those containing toxic metals are inhaled or otherwise ingested. On the other hand, why take chances? For safety’s sake, and simply for your own comfort, you should avoid inhaling or ingesting pastel dust as much as possible. This means keeping your pastels away from food, shaking your paper to dislodge dust rather than blowing on it, and (particularly if you have asthma or other respiratory ailments) wearing a surgical mask while you work. As noted above, an air purifier is a good idea, as is a well ventilated workspace.

WEARING GLOVES There’s no way you can work with pastels and not end up with colorful hands. To make life easier at cleanup time (and if you have to run to answer the phone), wear a pair of disposable latex gloves while you work. The medical ones made come in boxes of 100 and are very cheap.



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KEEPING HANDS CLEAN Wearing gloves may mean less washing up at the end of your session, but whether or not you wear gloves, your hands will still collect color (this is particularly the case with softer pastels), and you want to avoid transferring this from pastel to pastel. To clean your hands/gloves when switching from one pastel stick to another, keep something to wipe them near where you are working. Baby wipes do a good job, as does ordinary paper towel that you’ve moistened beforehand with a little water. To make it really easy to access, put your paper towel in a plastic bag and tie one handle to your easel.



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CHAPTER 7 LOOKING AFTER YOUR PASTELS Pastel sticks are unfortunately prone to cross-contamination. Two pastels that come into contact will inevitably discolor each other. Ideally of course, you want to keep your pastels as pristine as possible. Otherwise you might find yourself reaching for a green pastel…and getting a green pastel mixed with blue and a little red. In order to keep your pastels from exchanging pigment, you need to exercise care in the way you store and carry your pastels, and in the way you handle and clean them while working.

STORAGE OF YOUR PASTELS As noted above, whenever pastel sticks bump together they exchange colors. This is exactly what you don’t want, and this is why you want a storage box that doesn’t allow your pastels to touch or to move around once they are stowed. Luckily, there are plenty of cases on the market that fit the bill. Though pricey, a proper pastel storage box with individual foam slots for each stick is hard to beat. You’ll be able to find pastel storage boxes like this at your art supply store, or alternatively look in the classifieds section at the back of an art magazine. Before you buy, make sure that the pastels you have will fit the slots or wells in the particular box that you’re considering – sometime the larger pastels (such as those made by Schmincke and Unison) won’t. If custom-made isn’t your thing, you’re in luck – there are MANY other options for a container to store your pastels in, almost all of which are cheaper than something designed for the job. Try any or all of the following:



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1) Fishing tackle boxes; 2) Toolboxes; 3) Cutlery trays (good if you want to leave your pastels out where they can be seen); 4) Desktop drawer units; 5) Pencil boxes; and 6) Plastic pen trays. Note that for most of these options you’ll need to line their compartments with some thin foam so that your pastels have adequate cushioning. If none of these options appeal, you could make a box as a D.I.Y. project. Anyone with a modicum of carpentry skills should be able to make a pastel storage box with relative ease. NB: Once you have a case remember to always segregate colors (like goes with like) when you pack them away, to minimize the effects of any contamination.

TRAVELLING WITH PASTELS If you work (or plan to work) plein air, you’ll need a case that holds your pastels firmly and doesn’t allow them to move around, but is light and small enough to carry (along with the rest of your gear) to your chosen location. While there are readymade travel cases available (Dakota Art Pastels make a carry case they call The Universal Travel Box which does a good job), there’s no reason why a toolbox or tackle box won’t do the job if it has the necessary features.

KEEP PASTELS CLEAN WHILE WORKING It won’t take you long to realize that the tips of your pastels get dirty pretty easily. Every time you layer one color on top of another on your surface, the stick you use second will collect a smear of the color that’s already on the paper.



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So that you can periodically clean the tips of your pastels, keep a piece of paper towel near where you’re working, resting on a flat surface. Then, whenever your pastels become contaminated, you can just draw them across the paper to clean off the other color. Also, group your pastels into similar hues in your tray, trolley or pastel box. Not only does this lessen the problem of cross-contamination of colors, it makes it less likely that you will inadvertently grab the wrong color when you reach for a new stick (many a promising artwork has been ruined because the artist made this mistake!). A side benefit is that organizing your pastels makes it easier to keep track of what you have, and what perhaps might need replacing soon. (NB: Organizing your pastels by value rather than hue also has its advantages; for more, see ‘Organizing’, below under ‘The Importance of Value’.)

CLEANING PASTELS You’ll need to clean the tips of your pastels while you work, but you’ll probably also want to give your pastels a more thorough clean between sessions. You’ll be pleased to know that cleaning pastel sticks is very easy. All you need to do is to drop them into a bowl of semolina or ground rice, then put a lid or plate over the top and give the bowl a shake. Now all you have to do is pour out the contents into a sieve that you’ve placed on top of another bowl or a bin. The dirty semolina or ground rice will drop through, and you can pick your now freshly clean pastel sticks out of the sieve. If you prefer, you can actually store your pastel sticks in a container of ground rice full-time; that way they’re getting cleaned every time you put them away. Aside from keeping them clean, the rice will also cushion the sticks if you need to transport them somewhere. If you really want to get fancy, you can put your pastels in a mesh bag first, then put them into a container and pour the rice in. Now when you want to use them you can just pull the bag out, and voila! The rice (and dust) stays in the container. Another popular cleaning method is to take your tray of dirty, dusty pastel sticks out into an outdoor area, place a piece of fine wire mesh over them, and use a vacuum to suck up the accumulated dust (NB: ensure that your vacuum has a micro-filter so that the pastel dust doesn’t just blow out of the vacuum’s exhaust).



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CHAPTER 8 TECHNIQUES It’s natural to start off using pastels like you would a pencil: making lines with just the tip of the stick. There’s nothing wrong with this technique, and in fact many pastel artists continue to use their pastels in just this way. By varying the pressure and direction of the stroke, and by varying the size of the pastel being used, you can do a lot with this technique. Should you want to try different techniques however, you certainly won’t be stuck for options, and some of them allow for very interesting effects. Below are descriptions and notes on the popular techniques. You will probably notice that many of them sound the same, and you’ll be right – many of them are very similar. Pastel painters combine and recombine these techniques in endless personal permutations that defy neat definitions. It doesn’t matter. The only important thing is that you get ideas of things that might work for you. Good pastel paintings will often incorporate a number of different techniques to achieve the finished look. So that you know what to use when, practice different techniques and study the results. This will help you recognize the best use for them. In time you’ll have your own repertoire of favorite techniques, and be able to deploy them at the right times by instinct.

BLENDING Blending pastels simply means rubbing two adjacent colors into one another, and it’s one of the most commonly used techniques in pastel painting. Why? Well with oil and acrylic paint, you can mix colors before you apply them to the canvas, but pastels are a little different – the only way to mix them is to blend them together after they’re already on the paper.



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In pastels, one of the main uses for blending is shading. Be aware that too much blending of colors robs pastels of some of their lively, textural quality. It’s best for this reason to blend colors with a light touch, and to consider avoiding it altogether when you are working on the final layers of your piece. As noted above (‘Tools for Blending’), there are many different tools you can use for blending colors, from Q-tips to tortillons to your fingers. It’s more a matter of personal preference that anything else, so just pick a method and see how it works for you.

HATCHING & CROSS-HATCHING As you may be aware if you’ve done any drawing, ‘hatching’ is simply drawing a series of short, fine, parallel lines. In pastels it’s best done with a hard pastel stick or pastel pencils, as these are better at making fine lines than soft pastels. Crosshatching is of course the next step – drawing a second set of lines on top of and at right angles to the first. Both hatching and cross-hatching are usually used for shading. The thickness and spacing of your lines will of course affect how dark or light that area of your surface appears. The lines should always wrap around objects in your paintings to give the illusion of shape, and adjacent objects should have lines going different ways for contrast. One of the best times for hatching and cross-hatching is during the initial blocking-in of a painting, as it allows you to experiment without taking much time or fully committing you.

SHADING Shading with pastels is done by blending, hatching, or cross-hatching – refer to those sections for more.



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SCUMBLING Scumbling is the rather odd name given to the technique of lightly dragging the side of a soft pastel over a layer of pastel of another color that is already on the surface. This results in a ‘broken’ covering of the new color over the old, giving a textural, uncontrolled, ‘painterly’ effect. This technique has many creative applications. For example in a landscape painting you could use scumbling to give the impression of a mass of distant trees, or a patch of grass in the foreground.

FEATHERING Feathering is a way of gently drawing together multiple layers of pigment by softening and subduing their color and contrast using a charcoal stick. First put down the layers of pigment – usually three or more – then take a charcoal stick and lightly stroke over the top of the layers using the side of the stick. What this does is slightly darken and reduce the contrast of the pigment you’ve already put down, bringing their values closer together (for more on value, see ‘The Importance of Value’, below). The best uses for feathering are when you want to portray something that’s distant, such as a mountain range in the background of your landscape, or something that has muted quality, such as the surface of a pond. It’s important not to press too hard with the charcoal stick when feathering, as this can leave marks rather than just a thin soft layer.



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Extra soft thin vine charcoals sticks are the type most often recommended for feathering, but if you already own a different type give them a try and see if you like the result.

POINTILLISM Pointillism involves making lots of dots of color on your surface. It is perhaps more of a style than a technique, as paintings that use it tend to do so exclusively, rather than mixed with other effects. Pointillism relies on the fact that when someone looks at the dots, they perceive a greater range of tones that are actually there; in other words a kind of blending that happens in the mind of the audience rather than on the surface! Vincent van Gogh is the most famous artist to have used pointillism. This is a technique that requires a lot of work, but the finished effect is worth it, often suggesting reflected light.

STIPPLING Stippling is not as intense as pointillism and can take on many forms. It can be as loose or as tight as you like. You can use small dots or dashes and can be distributed even or uneven. It can be used to create shadowing.



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DUSTING An alternative to scumbling is dusting. This is the simple technique of holding a pastel stick of contrasting color above an existing block of color, and scraping it so that dust falls down onto the paper (obviously, you want your paper facing up). When you’re happy with the look, you use a pastel knife to push (or ‘fix’) the dust into the paper.

GLAZING Glazing adds a soft veil of color to an area of your painting. The effect is to either harmonize the colors in that area, or to give an impression of light or color. Glazing is done in a similar way to scumbling. First build up several layers of color, and then gently cover the area with a wash of color, using the side of a (preferably large) pastel. Unlike scumbling, the idea is to add a thin, even coating. You can use glazing to warm up or cool down an area of your painting, or to add a color. Glaze water to suggest a reflection of the sky, or glaze the table in front of a still life to suggest a faint reflection in the varnish. Use glazing if part of your scene is warmly lit up by the sun, or use it to lighten a distant feature of a landscape that you have made too dark.



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SIDE STROKE A side stroke is just what it sounds like – using the side of a pastel to make sweeping strokes of color. Half a pastel stick is just the right size for this, so peel the paper wrapper off a pastel stick and break it in half! Side strokes are great for filling areas of your paper with color. Broad side strokes are suggestive of movement and yield a ‘quieter’ effect than a lot of short, linear strokes. Press hard to get a more intense color; press softly to allow the paper to be visible through the pigment.

OTHER TECHNIQUES Blocking in This refers to the technique of using side strokes to put down broad but thin layers of color. This is done as a preliminary stage, before adding detail to the painting, in order to give an overall impression of what the finished work will look like. Graduation No, not what you do when you finish school! Graduation in pastels refers to when colors transition gradually from one to another. This is done by using adjacent side strokes of graded color and then blending them where they meet. Scraffito Scraffito is layering one color over another, and then scratching it to reveal some of the color beneath.



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Frottage This is the technique of laying your paper on a textured surface and then side stroking over the texture with a pastel (just like doing a rubbing, in other words). The texture will show through to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the sort of pastel used (hard or soft) and how hard you press.

SOME COMMON MISTAKES Overworking Remember, there’s no artwork so good that it can’t be ruined by overworking it! For this reason, a good rule of thumb is not to ever ‘finish’ a painting, because the point where you think it’s finished is likely to be where everyone else perceives it as overworked. Other ways to avoid overworking a painting are: 1) Always purposely leave some of the paper blank; 2) If you have the major elements down, take a break, put it out of sight, come back to it two days later and see if you still think it needs more; 3) Every time you’re about to add more pigment, ask yourself ‘does it really need this?’; 4) Get a second opinion before you decide something’s not finished; and 5) Work on more than one painting at once and frequently switch between them. Any and all of these will help you avoid overworking a painting.

Repetitive application While you might favor one technique or one stroke a lot in a certain painting, don’t use it exclusively. It will usually improve the work if you vary the techniques or strokes used at least to a degree, particularly in the focal areas of the work. Lack of variety can easily make a painting very uninteresting to look at, so experiment a little while keeping in harmony with the overall feel of the painting.



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Making mud Whatever you do, you want to avoid the dreaded muddiness in your paintings. Muddiness is just what it sounds like – muddy-looking colors on your surface – and it never looks good. Muddiness occurs when you layer warm colors over cool ones, or vice versa, without fixing the existing layer first. Overworking, including over-blending, is another cause. A third cause of muddiness is trying to make corrections without removing what’s wrong first. The fourth and final cause of muddiness is…using a brown pastel when you can use something else (using a brown pastel = instant mud!).



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CHAPTER 9 ALL ABOUT COLORS Here’s a quick refresher on the wonderful world of colors in painting: there are just three primary colors – red, yellow and blue. They’re called primary colors because you can make almost all the other colors by mixing them together in different ways, and because in their purest forms, they themselves can’t be made by mixing other colors. Black and white also can’t be made by mixing other colors together. Does that make them primaries too? No, because unlike the primary colors, black and white aren’t themselves used in mixing to create colors (just shades and tints of colors – see below). As a subject, colors and their various names, definitions, and relationships can get quite complex, but learning as much as you can about color will pay big dividends in your painting. A quick word about terminology: the word ‘hue’ here refers to a pure color; one to which no black or white has been added. Add black or white to a hue and you get a shade or a tint . For more on this, see ‘The Importance of Value’, below. Ok! Let’s continue.

PRIMARY COLORS As noted above, the primary colors are red, yellow and blue. Primaries can’t be made by mixing colors. Mix two primaries together and you get a secondary color.



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SECONDARY COLORS Secondary colors are those made by mixing together

any two primaries. Red and yellow make orange; yellow and blue make green; blue and red make purple.

TERTIARY COLORS Tertiary colors are the six made by mixing one

primary and one secondary color together, and they fall between the primary and the tertiary colors on the color wheel (see below). While the three primary and three main secondary colors are represented by one well-known name per color, that’s not really the case for tertiary colors. However, there are some typical names, such as aquamarine (which is a mixture of green and blue), and indigo (a mixture of purple and blue).

COLOR WHEEL A color wheel is an arrangement of primary and secondary hues in a specific, circular pattern. A color wheel allows us to quickly and easily remind ourselves of certain relationships between colors (for example, complementary colors – discussed further below). For this reason it’s an invaluable visual aid.

If you really want to get a firm understanding of the color wheel, you should make your own. Choose the purest primary pastels you have. Draw a circle and divide it into twelve wedges. Begin at the top wedge and color it in red. Then count four spaces clockwise and color that wedge yellow, then four more spaces and color it blue. Then fill in the secondary colors by combining your primary colors. For example, one step clockwise from red should be a layer of red, then a layer of



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yellow, then another layer of red. The next wedge should be two layers each of red and yellow, and the one after that, two layers of yellow and only one of red. Work your way around the wheel using this recipe, and by the time you’ve finished, you’ll have a really good grip on exactly what a color wheel shows us.

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS Each primary and secondary color has a complementary color , and it’s the one that’s opposite it on the color wheel. So for example: red’s complementary color is green; blue’s is orange, and yellow’s is purple. Tertiary colors also have complementary colors, but with tertiary colors it’s more about a range of colors than something exact. Ochre is mostly red-yellow, so its complementary colors would be those colors that are generally opposite, on the blue-green side of the wheel. So why are they important? Well, complementary colors tend to intensify each other when they are placed side-by-side, for example on an artist’s canvas or art paper. This is obviously a really important property for the painter to be aware of. You should keep complementary color relationships in mind when you’re selecting what colors to use in various areas of your paintings. If you want to draw attention to a certain area of your work, use complementary colors there. It’s possible and in fact very effective to make a picture entirely with just two complementary colors. However, it’s a good idea to make one of the two colors dominant; as if they are 50/50 the effect will be so intense that it’ll be too hard on the viewer’s eyes!

WARM & COOL COLORS The concept of ‘warm vs. cool’ is a way of categorizing colors where the hues from blue-green through to blue-violet on the color wheel are cool, and the hues from yellow through to red are warm. The reason for this categorization is that warm and cool colors differ in how we perceive them. You may already know that cool colors tend to recede in a painting, while those which are warm in temperature tend to thrust themselves forward. Painting is all about trying to make two dimensions look like three, and so applying this knowledge to your © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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work is crucial, as it will help you immensely in creating illusions of space and depth – i.e. illusions of three-dimensionality. Also, warm and cool colors differ in how we react to them. Warm colors are vivid, energetic, and evoke ‘warm’ emotions such as feelings of love or comfort. Cool colors are calm and distant, and evoke ‘cooler’ emotions such as feeling soothed or even sad. If you want your painting to have a certain feel, think about these properties of warm and cool colors when you select the pastel sticks you are going to use.

COLORFUL GRAYS & SHADOWS In everyday parlance, ‘gray’ is a pretty imprecise word. We use to describe any of the wide variety of different grays that occur in nature. Once you start to pay attention, you’ll quickly realize that in fact, no two grays are alike. A gray stone in direct, warm afternoon light will be an apricot-gray, while the areas of the same stone that are in shadow might be a cooler blue-gray. Similarly, shadows falling on things that are themselves different colors will not be black, but a dark shade of a color. So: when you are trying to depict gray objects and shadows in your paintings, stay away from plain gray and plain black. With observation you’ll see that there’s more to the blacks and grays that occur in nature, and you should seek to replicate this in your work.

WORKING WITH COLORS Working effectively with colors often means achieving color harmony . Using harmonious colors will lend an impact and sense of unity to your paintings that’s almost impossible to achieve by any other methods. Happily, using harmonious colors is also very easy: a color scheme that uses only colors which are adjacent on the color wheel (bluegreen, green, green-yellow, and yellow, for example) will almost always create a harmonious, serene, and comfortable feel. Using only adjacent colors will of course limit your palette, but that can be a good thing. Better to work with a limited palette of harmonious colors, than an unlimited palette of colors that clash horribly! © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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If you’re skeptical about the benefits of using a harmonious color scheme in your paintings, try examining the work of the Old Masters with an eye to color harmonies. You’ll find that the ‘limited palette of harmonious colors’ formula is one that they employed regularly and to great effect.

MIXING BY OVERLAYING COLORS It’s a unique feature of pastels that you can layer one color over another in a way that still shows some of the color underneath. Because the surfaces used with pastels are textured, even a heavy stroke will leave some hints of the color beneath showing. Or you can use a cross-hatching, scumbling, or dusting technique (see above under ‘Techniques’) that will leave even more of the existing color showing. However you do it, layering will allow you to make areas that simply vibrate off the page with color. You can also use layering to create some interesting color effects – play around with layering and you’ll quickly find your favorites. Remember that while soft pastels will layer over hard pastel marks without disturbing them, hard pastels will make grooves in soft pastel areas.

NB: If you’re concerned about disturbing an existing layer of pigment when you layer another over the top, spray the existing layer with fixative first.



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CHAPTER 10 COMPOSITION What is composition? Composition refers to how the various objects or elements in your painting are positioned, and how they relate to one another. ‘Good’ or ‘strong’ composition can be rather intangible, but when you look at a painting that is well composed, it just ‘feels right’. Another way of saying this is to say that a painting with good composition is aesthetically pleasing enough that it captures and holds the viewer’s attention. Similarly, a painting with bad composition just feels wrong (or at best, uninteresting). So as artists, how do we ensure that our paintings always have good composition? Eventually it will become second nature to you, and you will instinctively know how to compose the elements in your paintings in pleasing way. However, if you’re just starting out, there are a small number of compositional ‘rules’ that artists have identified over the centuries. Observance of these rules has been shown time and again to lead to a good, aesthetically pleasing composition. All of them are easy to follow.

THE FOCAL POINT The focal point of a painting is the place within the frame that draws the attention of the viewer. Hopefully, it’s where you planned for it to be! If you aren’t careful, the actual focal point in your painting might be somewhere in the frame you didn’t mean for it to be, stealing attention away from what you wanted to focus on. Another way of thinking about the focal point is to say that the focal point is (or should be) what the painting is ‘about’. So for example in a portrait, the painting is ‘about’ a specific person, and so you want the focal point to be their face (or even more exactly, their eyes, as this is the part of a face that we tend to spend the most time looking at). The best advice is to decide at the outset what the focal point of your painting will be, and build the rest of the painting around it. Doing it this way should allow you to avoid inadvertently putting other © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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elements in the frame which steal the viewer’s attention away from your intended focal point. Another way to ensure that the focal point is where you want it to be is to place it in one of the areas of the frame that naturally draw the viewer’s attention. The golden ratio and the rule of thirds can help here (see below).

THE GOLDEN RATIO The golden ratio is a mathematical rule that was recognized by the Ancient Greeks. And what is the golden ratio? Well, imagine a line that is divided into two unequal sections. When the ratio of the small section to the big section is the same as the ratio of the big section to the entire line, then the lengths of the two sections are in the golden ratio. In numbers, this works out to a ratio of approximately 1-to1.618. So what’s the use of the golden ratio? Well applying it to art seems to produce aesthetically pleasing results. The Ancient Greeks applied it to architecture, but it works equally well in the two-dimensional world of painting. If it sounds worryingly complicated, don’t worry, because when applied to painting or drawing there’s an easy way to ensure your composition observes the golden rule. You just need to use a ruler and pencil to divide up your surface before you begin to lay down color. Here’s how you do it: 1) Start with your rectangular sheet of drawing paper. Connect either of the sets of two opposing corners with a diagonal line. 2) From the diagonal, connect one of the remaining corners to the diagonal by a line that is perpendicular to the diagonal.



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3) Through the point on the diagonal where the perpendicular line meets it, draw two lines, one horizontal and one vertical that divide the canvas into four unequal sections. The ratio of the largest of these sections to the overall canvas is a golden ratio.

Now that you have one intersection point, you can see where the other three would go, one in each corner of the frame. What now? Just place the focal point of your painting at or near one of these four points. You should find that doing so has the effect of giving your work a pleasing balance.

THE RULE OF THIRDS Like the golden ratio, the rule of thirds is another rule of composition that helps you to decide where to put your focal point. It’s very popular in photography, but is also applicable to painting (after all, it’s been around a long longer than photography has!). The rule of thirds is simple to apply: just divide the area of your surface into six equal sections with two imaginary horizontal lines and two vertical ones.



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The rule of thirds says that focal points should be placed at or near any of the four points where the lines intersect, and that horizontal or vertical lines in the frame should follow one of the imaginary rule of thirds lines.

The four intersection points created by the four rule of thirds lines are sometimes called ‘power points’, shown in this diagram by green dots:

Now that you know the rule of thirds, take a look at some paintings, drawings or photos that don’t observe it. You’ll notice how jarring it is when a line, for example a horizon, divides the frame equally into two, or when a focal point is placed in the dead centre of the frame away from the four points where the imaginary lines intersect.

THE ELEMENTS In addition to paying attention to where your focal point lies, you should also think about your compositions in terms of the number and shapes of the elements within the frame. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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For whatever reason, an odd number of elements is usually more pleasing than an even number. You should also use a variety of shapes in your paintings, and vary their size and their distance from one another. Too much order, regularity and symmetry in a painting rarely leads to a pleasing composition. With regard to the distance between the elements in your paintings, avoid ‘kissing’ elements. Kissing in this context means just touching, and it creates a weak, connected shape. Ensure instead that the various elements in your frame are either definitely separated, or definitely overlapping. Finally, don’t forget to vary your compositions from one painting to the next. Even if your compositions are good, it will stretch and stimulate you to vary where you place your horizon and where you place your focal point. Also remember to switch between portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) orientations once in a while for something different.



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CHAPTER 11 THE IMPORTANCE OF VALUE Value or tone (the words mean the same thing) is a property of a

color. It refers to the lightness of the color, which depends on whether or how much black or white has been added to it. Maroon, for example, is a dark value of red (i.e. it has had black added to it), while pink is a light value of red (it has had white added to it). As mentioned in an earlier chapter, a color that has had no white or black added to it is called a hue. Add black to a hue and you get a shade; add white to a hue and you get a tint. Add the same amount of black or white to two different hues and you get two shades (or tints) that are equal in value. One of the most important things to realize about value is that it’s highly relative. In a painting, how it’s perceived for one color is heavily influenced by the values of the other colors in the painting. For example, a color that looks light in one painting, where it’s surrounded by colors with darker values than it, will look much darker in another, where it’s surrounded by colors with lighter values than it. It’s all about context. Why is this important? It’s important because for best effect, the values in your paintings must contrast. In other words, a range of values should be represented. This will give the objects in your paintings three-dimensional form, and the overall effect will be a painting with depth. The alternative – a painting with only mid-tones – will often look flat and dull in comparison.

LEARN THE VALUES To learn about value, try the following exercise: • • •

Take a piece of paper and draw a column down the centre. Divide the column into seven boxes. At one end, color the box in completely black, and at the other, color it in white. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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•

•

Take a pure blue pastel, and in the box next to the white, color it in white, then a little blue, then white again. Color the next box with blue then white then blue again; the next just blue; the next blue then black then blue again; the next black then blue, then black then blue again.

Now you have a scale of values from pure white to pure black. Stand back from the paper at least five feet and take a look. From a distance you should be able to see not a stepped progression, but a gradual change from white, through blue, to black. Another way to get a sense of how values compare is to squint. Yes, you read that right! Often it isn’t immediately obvious whether two colors share a similar value, even when they are side-by-side. However, if you squint, it’s easier to determine whether they are the same value, as colors of the same value tend to be difficult to distinguish from each other when you squint. If you can easily tell the difference between the two colors, then most likely they are different values. Finally, you can see how values compare by using a monochrome filter. A monochrome filter is simply a piece of plastic in a primary color. The most common monochrome filters are dark red. The idea is that you look at an object you want to paint (or at your work-inprogress) through the filter, and the color of the filter reduces all of the colors in your work to varying values of red (if what you want to look at is red, try a strong blue filter instead). This enables you to easily compare them without the distraction of seeing their hue.

ARE THE VALUES VARIED? As noted above, it’s generally important that your paintings encompass a range of values. To test whether your work-in-progress does this there are a couple of methods. One way is to make a thumbnail sketch of it using only white (for the lightest values), black (for the darkest ones), and gray (for the mid-tones). You’ll know your values are varied if there’s white, black AND gray in your sketch. Another way to test if your values are varied is to make a black-andwhite photocopy of your painting, and if there is a range of shades of gray in the copy. Similarly you can take a photo of your painting with a © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved. www.paintingwithpastels.com 57

digital camera, load the photo into an image editing program, and convert it into a grayscale photo. Again, this will show you whether the tonal range is too narrow. If you think the values in your work-in-progress aren’t varied enough, try adding some values that are closer to the ends of the tonal spectrum.

TOO MUCH MIDDLE VALUE The most common problem with paintings that don’t have enough tonal range is too many mid-tones. To avoid this, consider whether your light values are light enough. Pure white may be going too far, but you usually want to get as close to it as possible. Also consider whether your dark values are dark enough. Black is also usually going too far however, unless you’re painting an indoor scene. If you do use black, give it depth by blending a color into it (red will make black deeper, while blues and yellows will give it luminosity). To make striking paintings you often need to push contrasts, so above all don’t be afraid to make your darks darker and your lights lighter.

VALUE RELATIVE TO OTHER VALUE As noted above, exactly how light or dark a value appears depends on what other values are near to it. In the following picture, both the right and the left vertical bands are a consistent tone, yet they seem to change tone depending whether they are against a light or a dark background.



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So how does this information affect the way we paint? For one, it affects our choices if we want to use a contrasting tone. While contrast is important, you won’t need as light a value next to a dark value as you would need next to other light values. A very light tone will probably be too much for a painting that is dark overall, and vice versa. What’s important is not overall tonal range, but relative tonal range.

HOW TO THINK ABOUT VALUE Above all, you should start to think of tonal range, and of how the different tones in your painting are arranged, as elements of composition. In other words, it’s something that needs to be a considered choice, and not something that is left to chance. Do this and your paintings will benefit immeasurably.

ORGANIZING Once you experimented with and learned about values in your painting, you should consider reorganizing your pastels according to their value rather than their color. When your pastels are organized by color first, you tend to think in terms of colors while you work. When your pastels are instead organized by value, it helps you to think in terms of value while you work, and as we have seen, this is in many ways a more important consideration that color. Try dividing your pastels into six value divisions. These will be effectively three levels of dark values, and three levels of light values. Then, within each of these divisions, arrange your pastels by temperature – cool colors on one side, and warm on the other. When you finish, you’ll have your pastels organized in a way that makes you think about their first and second most important characteristics (value and temperature), and that helps you to easily choose between colors or the same or of contrasting value and/or temperature. The actual color of your pastels is then relegated to third place in the pecking order…which is exactly where it should be.



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CHAPTER 12 UNDERPAINTING As the name suggests, underpainting is coloring an area of your surface that you later intend to cover (though not necessarily totally obscure) with a different pigment. For most pastel artists it comes after preliminary sketching, and before the final work begins. You don’t have to do underpainting, but as it gives a foundation for what is to follow, sets the ‘mood’ of the work, and can make the finished article look richer and brighter, it is recommended. It may also help you plan better how you are going to achieve your goals for the finished work. It also allows you an opportunity to see and correct any errors in your composition before you start to apply your top layers. Finally, underpainting can be something that provides you with a cue that you respond to when you begin to add your top layers of pigment. As some of the underpainting will show through the overpainting, exactly how to carry out underpainting is not a trivial decision. As for most things in pastels, there are a variety of different ways to do your underpainting. You might simply use pastels, either dry or wetted with water or alcohol for a more painted look. You could use another medium, such as watercolor, gouache or thinned oil paints. You might use a range of colors, or just black and white. You might use only multiple values of one hue. How you go about your underpainting depends on your personal preference, and on how much impact you want the underpainting to have on the finished work. A word of warning: if you underpaint with something wet, always ensure that it has totally dried out before you start using pastels on top of it.

UNDERPAINTING WITH PASTEL A common and simple way to underpaint with pastels is to cover the paper with side strokes of a pastel stick, then to blend these strokes together. This produces a soft, ethereal background. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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You should use bright, pure pastels for underpainting, as particularly dark or light tones can produce a ‘cloudy’ effect. It’s best to use brands that produce sticks which are 100% pigment (Sennelier is one), as these give the most ‘brilliant’ results. Once you have laid down the pigment, a common variation is to then brush it with a stiff brush loaded with water or alcohol. This gives a wet effect similar to watercolor or oils, but (as noted above) should only be done if the surface can take liquids without crinkling. It’s best to apply only thin amounts of pastel when underpainting, as too much will create a paste when wet. When you wet the pigment, start with the lighter areas first, and be careful with the darker areas – they can easily contaminate the lighter areas if you aren’t. Also, test pastel brands before using them for wet underpainting. Some manufacturers add inert substances which can be water-resistant or ‘gummy’ when wet. After you finish your underpainting with pastels, it’s a good idea to lightly spray your paper with fixative. This prevents later work from disturbing the underpainting and resulting in a ‘muddy’ look.

UNDERPAINTING WITH WATER COLOR Underpainting with watercolor works well – providing your paper can take it. If you already use watercolor paper as your surface, no problem! Otherwise, check first. Applying a watercolor underpainting is easy: just paint freely with a large brush. As far as what colors to use, this is very much a matter of personal choice. Some artists find that underpainting with the same color that will go on top of it, but a darker value, lends an extra vibrancy to the top layer. Others experiment with contrasting underpainting and find particular combinations that work for them.

UNDERPAINTING WITH GOUACHE OR ACRYLIC Along with watercolors, gouache and acrylic work for underpainting too. The advantage they hold over watercolors is that with them it’s possible to get a layer that’s truly opaque. Watercolors are always somewhat translucent.



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If you’re underpainting with gouache or acrylic, apply them thinly, or you risk ‘filling in’ the tooth of your paper and rendering it incapable of holding pastel pigment. You can mix gouache and watercolor together if you want to achieve a specific color and/or value, but again, check first that your paper can take as much water as you intend to put on it without crinkling. Remember also that you can always just buy a paper that’s the color and value you want rather than starting with white and having to use underpainting to achieve it.

UNDERPAINTING WITH OIL PAINT If it’s your preference, it’s perfectly possible to underpaint with oil paint. However, you first need to make sure that your surface is able to take oil. Most papers won’t, and so you’ll need to prep them first by applying a coat of acrylic gesso. You’ll want to thin the oil paint to the consistency of weak tea with turpentine or mineral spirits (try Gamsol by Gamblin, or Turpenoid by Weber) before you apply it. Oil paint that is too thick will take a long time to dry, may destroy the tooth of the surface, and may interact negatively with the pastel that follows. Keep in mind that mineral spirits can soften adhesives. The advantage of underpainting with oil paint is that it’s much easier to apply and to control, as you mix and wet it on a separate palette. When you wet pastel that’s already on your surface it’s much more difficult to control.

EFFECTS Here are four different underpainting ‘effects’ that you might find useful: Monochromatic underpainting It’s pretty common for underpainting to be done in monochrome. Here just one color is used, but in a range of values, depending on the value the artist plans to make that area of the painting when doing the overpainting. This allows you to work out and fine-tune the tonal © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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values you want in your finished artwork without the distraction of different colors. Contrasting color temperatures Another idea is to use contrasting color temperatures in your underpainting. You would do this where you plan to paint something that’ll either be mostly warm or mostly cool colors when it’s finished (for example a winter landscape). The idea behind using contrasting color temperatures is that where the underpainting is visible through the overpainting, it will give the overpainting a ‘sparkle’ due to the fact that the colors are complementary (see above ‘Complementary Colors’ for more). Colors similar to those in the final painting Underpainting with similar (or the same) colors as you’ll use for your overpainting will make the colors in the finished product brighter. Obviously, this is an effect that’s best used when you’re painting a bright, colorful subject. Random colors If you want to throw caution to the winds, just pick a small number of colors and underpaint with them at random. The underpainting will show through the overpainting at various places and provide an interesting twist. Doing this is a good way to discover new combinations of underpainting and overpainting colors that work well together.

EXPERIMENT WITH UNDERPAINTING Just as for everything else in pastel painting, the only real way to understand exactly the effects of different types of underpainting is to carry out your own experiments. You can just incorporate this experimentation into your normal painting, but if you want to speed the process up, here’s how to do it: pick a subject matter that you’ve painted before and are already familiar with, and do a series of nine small paintings varying only the underpainting.



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For the first painting, underpaint the entire surface with pure white (or alternatively simply choose a surface that is white to begin with). Do the same for mid-gray, and then black. This will show you the importance of value in underpainting. Next try different color temperatures. Underpaint the entire surface with a mid-value warm color, like a dull orange (or again, just select a surface that is that color to begin with). Then try a mid-value cool color, such as a gray-blue violet. Finally, try one where you underpaint different areas of your surface with either a warm or a cool color (try ultramarine blue and burnt sienna). Next, do a painting where you match the underpainting to the colors of the overpainting, but using consistently lighter values. Then do one where you underpaint with the complementary colors of the overpainting. For the last of your series, underpaint with random colors. Doing this series of nine paintings (and comparing the results) will allow you to see the effect of different ways of underpainting. Hopefully, it will also show you that there is really no ‘right or wrong’ way of doing it, only choices and consequences.



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CHAPTER 13 USING PHOTOS As subject matter for your paintings, you have an obvious choice of painting what you can see in front of you, painting what you can see in your head, or painting what you can see in a photo that you have. This chapter discusses the pros and cons of the last of these – painting from a reference photo or photos. There’s little doubt that photographs can be a great reference tool for artists. If you’re painting a landscape but you don’t have time to finish it, or the sun is setting, or the light changing, you can take a photo, take that back to your studio, and use both the photo and your memory to finish the painting. Similarly if you’re painting a portrait of a live model, a photo is a great reference to use to finish the painting. It means that your model doesn’t have to sit for the entire length of time it takes you to finish the piece; you can get the initial ‘life drawing’ down and then finish it later at your leisure. So far so good – photos can be very helpful for any artist, and this includes people who work with pastels. But is this the whole story?

WHY SHOULDN’T YOU USE PHOTOS? Many artists dislike the idea of painting from a photograph. The reasons differ, but one of them might be that because photography is an artistic medium too, it feels wrong to simply attempt to replicate with a different medium what can already be seen as a finished artwork in its own right. Some say that another reason not to paint from photos is because painting from a photo is inherently ‘limiting’; that it doesn’t allow for the necessary freedom of expression and creativity that makes painting enjoyable and produces good work. On the other hand, it’s difficult to see how painting from a photo is all that different from painting anything else that you can see in front of you (a landscape, a bowl of fruit, or a person). © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved. www.paintingwithpastels.com 65

Perhaps the best advice is use photos when you feel like it, but to also paint from what you can see, what you can remember, and what you can imagine as well.

A REFERENCE PHOTO NOT ART One thing that is not debated in the artistic world is the utility of photographs as reference points, and as sources of inspiration. There are more or less two different ways to use reference photos. One is to take a photo of a subject (a person, for example) that you want to paint, and using the photo later when you are ready to paint to remind you of what the subject looked like. If this is what you’re doing, rather than trying to take one perfect photo of a subject, it’s a better idea to take five or six, and to vary the camera settings and (if possible) your viewpoint. You’ll find that having multiple reference photos allows you to get a better feel for the subject and to paint a looser, freer representation of it. The other way to use reference photos is more of a ‘bits and pieces’ approach, where you take many photos of different examples of a subject or theme, or just of things that interest you visually, then later use parts of each to stimulate a painting which doesn’t look much like any one of the photos in particular. You could think of this as sort of like using a camera as a high-tech sketchbook. It must be said that some artists scorn reference photos completely, and believe that you should only every use a sketchbook and pencil for these sorts of purposes. The reality is however, that most of us don’t paint for a living, and so we don’t have the kind of time that it would take to sketch everything we see that we think we might later want to paint.

PHOTOS CAN LIE Any photographer will tell you that photos aren’t the exact replication of reality that many people believe them to be. How a subject looks in one particular photo depends on a multitude of factors, including the type of camera, the settings used, the focal length, any postprocessing done to the photo, and so on. Besides which, a photo © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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depicts only one static moment in time: one time of year; one time of day, and one kind of light. These are all the more reasons that you should feel free to use ‘artistic license’ when you paint from a photo or photos. Create what you want to create, rather than exactly what’s depicted in your reference photo. Hey, it’s not ‘reality’ anyway!

PAINTING FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S PHOTOS Don’t forget that reproducing a photo in a painting may be a breach of copyright, unless of course you have the permission of the person who took the photo. Of course this is unlikely to be a problem unless you sell or exhibit the artwork, but it’s worth knowing just in case. To avoid copyright infringement, paint only from your own photos or from copyright free photos. Or, use photos for inspiration, rather than making a recognizable copy of them.

MAKING THE PAINTING BETTER THAN THE PHOTO If you’re painting from a photo or photos, you have a choice to make about how faithful to the photo (and therefore how ‘realistic’) your painting will be. Some people like to make ‘photorealistic’ paintings of things; others prefer a looser treatment, and will change things in order to make what they believe will be a stronger painting. Of course, the vast majority of the time you can feel free to improve on reality to your heart’s content. Where this may change is where either your subject is recognizable (e.g. the Eiffel Tower), or you give your painting a name that identifies it as a painting of something specific (e.g. ‘Niagara Falls’). Then you leave yourself open to the complaint that you’ve painted an inaccurate representation of something. Even if you are painting something highly recognizable, it’s hard to see the harm in altering reality; it’s just ‘artistic license’. Be that as it may, you still may want to consider beforehand whether it would bother you if someone complained that you’d depicted the ‘something’ incorrectly, and if you think that it would, stick to the facts when you paint.



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PLAY AROUND WITH PHOTOS Don’t forget that if you have a digital camera (or a film camera and a scanner), you can play around with your photos on your computer after you’ve taken them. This can help how you use them in your painting. For example, you can crop a photo down to just the part you want to paint, or you can cut and paste parts of various photos into one file so that you can play around with different compositions. It’s worth learning how to use some image-editing software (try Picasa, which is a free download) so that you can do these kinds of things.

I did this painting from a colour photo which was of the full body – done in black through to white pastels focusing on the face only made it very different from the original photo.



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CHAPTER 14 HOW TO MAKE PASTELS As we’ve learned, pastels are composed of just three ingredients: pigment; filler, and binder. While pastels are certainly easy to buy, it’s not complicated to make them at home, and doing so will certainly save you a lot of money. Be aware that while making your own pastels isn’t complicated, it will definitely take you at least a few tries before you get everything right. Don’t give up! And make notes as you go so that when you hit on exactly the right recipe, you’ll be able to repeat it again in the future. Hopefully you’ll find the process fun. Below are two recipes for making pastels. The first uses cheaper ingredients, while the second will give you a better-quality result.

CHEAP PASTEL RECIPE Ingredients •

•

•

•

A quarter of a cup of rolled or crushed oats (this will be combined with the water to make the binder). A quart (just over a liter) of water (preferably distilled so there isn't any chlorine in it). Two tablespoons of powdered tempera or poster paint (for pigment). Half a cup of unscented talcum/baby powder (for filler).

Step 1: Put the water in a saucepan and put it on the stove to boil. Once the water is boiling add the oats, mix them in, and leave to boil for five minutes. Step 2: Take the saucepan off the stove and pour the mixture through a fine sieve to strain out the oats. Keep the water and discard the oats. Step 3: In a bowl, mix the talcum powder with the powdered paint. Once they’re mixed together, add a teaspoon of the strained oats © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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water and mix it in. Eventually you should get a consistency similar to dough, which sticks to itself but not to your fingers. Step 4: Roll your dough into a tubular pastel shape, and then cut them into sections (the length and thickness are up to you). Step 5: Place your pastels on absorbent paper and leave them to dry at room temperature for at least 24 hours. Tips: •

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If your pastels are too crumbly, this means your binder was too weak. Next time, add more oats to the water. If your pastels are too hard, your binder was too strong. Break up the pastel in a bowl, add a little more filler, pigment, and a teaspoon of water, and re-mix. An alternative binder is diluted wallpaper paste. You can create tints of a particular color by adding more filler or white pigment.

TRUE PASTEL RECIPE Ingredients • • • •

Gum arabic or gum tragacanth (this is the binder). Distilled water. Pigment. Chalk or kaolin/China clay (this is the filler).

Step 1: In a bowl, Dissolve the binder in the water in the ratio 1:20 (i.e. one part binder to 20 parts water). Step 2: In a larger bowl, mix the filler and the pigment in the ratio 2:1 (i.e. two parts filler to one part pigment). Step 3: Slowly add the binder liquid to the filler/pigment and mix until it has the consistency of dough or putty. Step 4: Roll out and dry as described above. Tips: •

Gum arabic makes a harder pastel than gum tragacanth. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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•

Damar resin mixed with plenty of white spirit or turpentine can also be used as a binder.

WHEN PASTELS SHATTER Fragments chip and break off pastel sticks all the time. Should you just vacuum up or throw away these fragments? No! You should collect them, because it’s relatively easy to make the fragments into a fresh new pastel stick. Here’s how: Step 1: Remove any bits of label that may still be sticking to the pastel pieces. Step 2: Either sort the fragments by color or if you want to create a new color mix them, following the rules of color theory. Step 3: Break or grind the pastel pieces up as fine as you can. A non porous pestle and mortar is the best tool for this (make sure to clean it thoroughly afterwards), or just use a bowl and the back of a spoon. Step 4: Add one or two teaspoons of distilled water to the ground-up pastel (NB: don’t use straight tap water as this may contain chlorine which will bleach the pastel pigment or other chemicals or minerals that may interact with it). Step 5: Mix into a thick paste with a palette knife or your fingers. Step 6: Roll the paste up into a tubular pastel shape using your fingers (if it’s too wet, remove some of the excess moisture with a piece of absorbent paper, such as paper towel). Step 7: Leave to dry at room temperature for at least 24 hours. Tip: If you’re using pieces of extremely soft pigment, using skimmed milk instead of distilled water will make your new pastel slightly harder.



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CHAPTER 15 STORING/FRAMING YOUR WORK Unframed pastel paintings are notoriously fragile. You can’t store them touching anything (apart from glassine paper – see below), and you also need to be careful of dust, which can be impossible to remove without also removing pigment. What’s the solution? Luckily, there are some safe ways to store your finished works, or if all else fails – you can always frame them.

STORING PASTEL PAINTINGS One very helpful product for storing pastel paintings is glassine paper. Glassine paper is a translucent tissue paper that is very thin, very smooth, air and water resistant, and can be manufactured so that it’s pH neutral. It’s also anti-static, so it won’t attract particles of pastel. Interleaving glassine paper between your pastel paintings will protect them from exposure, rubbing together and exchanging pastel, and having something spilled on them. It’s a good idea to also interleave something like a (pH-balanced) foam core board between your paintings along with the glassine paper, so that the weight of the paintings is evenly distributed.

USING FIXATIVE AT THE END As discussed above (see ‘The Tools You Will Need’), the use of fixative spray is somewhat controversial. It’s universally agreed that a good use for fixative is during the painting process (to restore tooth so that more layers can be added), but using fixative on a finished work to prevent smudging is thought by many pastel artists to be a bad idea. The reason is that fixative affects the way that light refracts off of pastel pigments, making them darker and duller. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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As you can see fixative does darken the color changing the painting’s appearance.

With

Without

If you want to test using fixative for yourself, try it first on one of your failures before trying it on one of your triumphs, and follow these guidelines: 1) Test the spray pattern on a scrap of paper before directing it towards your painting; 2) Spray lightly, quickly, and evenly (you can add a second coat if the first wasn’t enough); 3) Watch out for nearly-empty cans, as they’re more likely to splatter; 4) Wear a mask, and always spray fixer outside or in a wellventilated area; and 5) Turn the can upside down and spray to clear the nozzle each time you finish using it. After you’ve applied the fixer, consider re-working your highlights so that at least they remain bright. An alternative way of using fixative on a finished work is to spray it from the back, allowing it to soak slowly through to the front. This causes less change to the appearance of the pastels than spraying from the front. Even those who advocate the use of fixative would agree that framing a painting behind glass, rather than relying on fixative, is the ultimate option for protecting and preserving it.

PROTECTION © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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While pastel paintings are fragile, pastel pigment itself ages very well. Unlike liquid paints, pigment, if treated well, retains nearly all of its color and brilliance even after hundreds of years. If it’s treated well, it won’t fade, crack, or discolor. So – treat it well! This means avoiding exposing your pastel paintings to direct sunlight, and storing them face up (unless they’re hanging) and away from heat or humidity. For the ultimate in protection, frame your work behind glass, with or without a mat.

WITHOUT MAT Traditionally pastel paintings have been framed with a mat, but it is becoming increasingly popular not to. This has the advantage of being cheaper and easier, and (some believe) makes the finished effect look more like an oil painting and less like a print or a poster. When framing without a mat, it’s crucial to use spacers around the edge of the glass so that the paper and the glass are not touching. Frametek make a type of spacer that is a clear acrylic rectangular-incross-section tube with one sticky side – these are very effective.

WITH MAT Most people still frame their pastels with a mat board. A mat board ensures the painting doesn’t touch the glass, and it’s also another element of the artwork. If you choose to use a mat you’ll need to decide what color. The choice is up to you, but there are a few things you should avoid, such as choosing a mat that’s the same color as the frame – you want a contrast between mat and frame. Also, consider a mat that is mid-way in value between the wall and the average value of the painting, so that there is a transition in value between wall, mat, and painting. Finally, if the painting is going to hang with a group of paintings on the same wall or in the same room, it’s a good idea to use the same mat for all of them. This will harmonize and draw together the group.



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When selecting a mat, it’s worth paying extra to get one that is 100% acid free. Mats that are not 100% acid free can, over time, turn yellow, and the acid can damage the paper that they touch. As a rule of thumb, use at least a 3 inch wide mat for smaller paintings, and a 4 inch wide mat for larger ones. A mat that’s too narrow will give your work a ‘pinched’ look. If you’re using a mat they’re less essential, but consider using spacers between the paper and the mat. They won’t be noticeable, and they’ll create a small gap between paper and mat that any loose pigment dust can fall down into (this is preferable to it collecting at the bottom edge of the mat where it will be visible). An alternative is to use a mat that has been cut with a reverse bevel. Again, this prevents pastel dust from showing.

MOUNTING BOARD You’ll need to mount your painting if you use paper as opposed to a rigid surface such as hardboard. As a mounting board, 100% acid free foam core is a good choice. An acid free board is essential, as they won’t turn yellow or damage your surface over time. Once you’ve cut it to size, don’t forget to mark out the area that will be visible through the mat, and use it as a guide when you’re adhering the painting to it. To stick your painting to the mounting board, use heat release adhesive tape. It adheres firmly and releases without water. Use the tape only at the top of the painting and use a T-hinge that allows the painting to hang freely behind the mat. This allows any of the materials involved to expand and contrast freely without causing any problems. For more information see “Resource” section below.



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FRAMING YOUR PAINTING Framing your work is a way of protecting it, but also it’s a way of showing it off. Choose the right frame and it’ll enhance your art as well as keeping it safe; choose the wrong frame and it’ll distract the viewer from the artwork. Frames are available in every conceivable combination of materials, colors, and profiles, so you won’t have any trouble finding the perfect one. If you can’t decide, go with a simple wood or metal frame, as these almost always look good. Before you commit to a frame, check that its rabbet size (i.e. the depth of the frame) is sufficient to accommodate the mat and glass package. The depth required is normally at least ! inch (measure to be sure). Also, choose a size that is 1/16 to 1/8 inch larger than the mat package to allow some room for expansion. For glass, single strength is fine. Though anti-reflective glass is an option if glare is likely to be a problem where it will be hung, it does have a tendency to dull the painting. You can choose a glass that has UV protection if you want to; this might be worthwhile if the work will be hung in a sunny room. Don’t use Plexiglas or acrylic, as static electricity can pull pastel off the paper.

HOW TO FRAME (WITH MAT) Unfixed pastels are not easy to frame, and so for best results, pay a professional framer to do it for you. If you want to do it yourself though, here is how to go about it. First, assemble all the various components. You’ll need your painting, the frame, the mounting board, spacers, the mat, the dust cover for the frame, a clean flat workspace, white cotton gloves, and some adhesive tape. You may also need either a mat cutter or a utility knife and a metal straight edge. Before you begin, visualize the order of the elements in a finished, framed painting, from front to back: first the frame; then the glass; the mat; spacers; the (already mounted using a T-hinge) painting; the filler board (if you have one); and finally, the dustcover. Visualizing this will help ensure that you get the order right. Also, put on your white cotton gloves before you begin. This will stop you getting fingerprints on the glass. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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Step 1: Take the back off your frame, and set your mounted painting down on top of it. You might find that it needs to be trimmed before it will fit in the frame. If so, tape some glassine paper to it to protect it, and then carefully trim it to the right size using either a mat cutter or a knife and straight edge. Step 2: Fix the spacers in the corners of your mounted painting, in positions where they will be hidden by the mat. Step 3: Take your mat and lay it on top of your mounted painting so that it’s resting on the spacers. Position it carefully. Remember that the beveled edge should face towards the painting rather than away from it. Step 4: Lay the glass on top of the mat. Again, position it carefully so that everything lines up. The weight of the glass should hold what is beneath it in place. Have a good look at the mat under the glass. Is there any dust on it? If there is, remove the glass and thoroughly clean the mat. Step 5: Fit the frame on top of the glass, mat, and painting. Get your fingers under the whole package, and (gently!) flip it over so that it is face-down on your table. Now you can fit the filler board (if you have one) and the dustcover, and turn the clasps to lock the whole package into place. And voila! You’re finished.

PROTECT YOUR ART WITHOUT THE EXPENSE Here’s a way to easily and cheaply protect your pastel paintings so that you can transport them. You’ll need foam core, archival photo corners, a craft knife, a pencil, and adhesive tape or glue. Step 1: Place your painting on the foam core and cut around it, leaving at least a 3in border on all sides. Step 2: Mark the corners of your painting on the foam core, then attach two photo corners to the foam core where the bottom two corners of your painting will go, using the pencil marks. Fit your painting into the corners, then attach the top two corners and fit the painting into those as well. Step 3: From the foam core you have left, cut out four 2in strips. Using your adhesive, stick these onto the larger piece of foam core around the edge (trim them to fit so you have a continuous border). © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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There should be 1in of clearance between these strips and your painting all the way around it. Step 4: Now your artwork is in its box and almost ready for transportation. All you need to do is place a piece of tissue paper over the top of the box, and then place another piece of foam core on top. Attach it with masking tape so that it makes a lid you can remove easily later. Step 5: Your painting is ready for transportation. Remember to transport pastel painting resting on their backs, so as to minimize the effect of vibrations shaking pastel particles loose.



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TIPS Pastel painting is an intricate world, and inevitably there’s a lot of

helpful advice that defies categorization. So this chapter is full of tips on a wide variety of subjects. You might consider highlighting anything that you think sounds useful for ease of later reference. •

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When you’re working, move your whole arm, not just your wrist. This encourages a looser, bolder technique. When using your fingers or hand to blend, you’ll need to regularly clean them to avoid cross-contamination of colors. Baby wipes are ideal for this. For cleaning pastel dust off your fingers, keep a ball of Blu-Tack near your easel. Just rolling it around in your hands for a few seconds will clean off the dust. If you find that your Blu-Tack is going hard, keep it in a piece of cling-wrap. Dirty paper stumps/tortillons can be cleaned for further use by unwinding a layer at the tip. Or, remove the tip using a pencil sharpener. Pastel doesn't always wash out well, so don’t work in clothes that you’re fond of. Pick out a few old t-shirts/ sweatshirts and designate those to work in. When you finish a painting, give it a couple of taps from behind so that excess pastel dust falls off. Like most things, you’ll improve fastest if you paint every day. Spend plenty of time looking at your work as you paint. Stand back from it to get a better perspective and to see it as a whole. To catch pastel dust while you work, use mat board or heavy card bent to form a U shape. Alternatively, place a 4in wide piece of aluminum foil at the bottom of your easel, held in place by the drawing board. Remove it periodically and empty the builtup dust. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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DIFFERENT BRANDS There are many different brands of pastels on the market today and you will try lots of them and end up sticking with the ones that you find the best for your style of painting. To start you off here is an overview of some of them.

Soft Pastels Reeves Soft Pastels These pastels are made by Winsor and Newton a respected student quality brand. They come in a wide variety of colors and in sets of 12, 24 or 36. Perfect for color blending and suitable for use on textured paper or card. Because they are very affordable you can use them to experiment to your hearts content. Rembrandt Pastels These pastels are great if whether you’re a beginner or not. They are a little harder than some of the softer pastels and have a high degree of lightfastness. Good for the layering technique as their texture allows them to be applied over existing layers without moving the colour. Rembrandt are often used as an underpainting or base coat for the softer pastels. Caran d’Ache Artist Soft Pastels This is a reliable brand of quality pastel. Made with minimal binders they are, however, a little more consistent in texture than other brands. Quite a forgiving pastel with good covering control, perhaps not as soft as the handmade ones, but do last a little longer. Once again another good choice for beginners as they allow mistakes to be painted over, scraped, or erased with a kneaded eraser. Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastel These extra soft pastels are ones that I tend to use a lot (the squares). They come in round or square " or full sticks. Can be © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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purchased separately or in box form and are not expensive. The colors are fade resistant and I find they blend really well. Sennelier Soft Pastels These are very soft pastels with no fillers and just enough binder to hold the pigment together. They probably have the largest range of shades of colors on the market and come in full and " sticks, although they are rather expensive. They are prepared by hand without compression and air dried to prevent brittleness. Sennelier Soft Pastels would be one of the finest soft pastels available. Art Spectrum Pastels These are made in Australia and are consistent with an excellent range of colors. All Art Spectrum pure pigment pastels are free from heavy metals, asbestos or other toxic substances. Another plus is that they are available in two sizes. Schmincke Soft Pastels These are an extra soft pastel with high concentration of pigments and a minimum of binders. The softness of the pastels permits a beautiful dense application, and the pigment concentration results in great color intensity. Excellent colour range, however, can be expensive. Unison Handmade Pastels These luxury pastels are for the serious pastellist – expensive. I personally have not used them, but know artists who have. Apparently they are superb to use. They have been gently hand-rolled and air-dried, and the stick is as much an organic sculpture as it is a tool. The pure pigment colour results in intense, vibrant application that is not muddied by the blending of colors. I will have to try one….

Hard Pastels Prismacolor Nupastel Color Sets NuPastels are stronger than ordinary soft pastels, which means less breakage and easier cleanup. Use them to create broad strokes and fine lines. They are a hard pastel that seem similar to Conté. They have a creamy texture which is good for blending. © 2009 Emma Ralph - All Rights Reserved.


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Van Gogh Hard Pastels These are an affordable pastel and well suited to the beginner or hobbyist. You will need a firm, toothy paper as they hard quite hard and don’t layer as well as soft pastel. They don’t crumble and a good for linear work. Would suggest you purchase just a few colors and try them. Van Gogh pastels are from the makers of Rembrandt pastels Faber-Castell Polychromos Pastels These are a hard pastel – not as hard as the Conté – but they do need a firm paper. The colors are all first class with high pigment density and have a great resistance to fading. Conté Crayons Conté are a very popular brand. The colors are dark darks and bright primaries. They are a very hard pastel, needing a firm paper, and they are good for fine work. I use them for my sketching as they produce little dust. The colors work well on dark paper. Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel Pencil These are an easy-to-use pencil and ideal for smaller size pastel drawings, hatching and linear work. The leads are tough but soft and smooth to use. Use them for the finer points of your painting and, as you can usually buy them separately, it means you can purchase the colour/s that you need.



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CONCLUSION There is no right or wrong way to build up your picture from the first stroke to the last. Some artists start by laying down the darker values first, others start with the eyes (when doing portraits), others, like myself, have a very basic sketch then work from the top down, others go from side to side or diagonally. It also depends on what the painting is – a landscape, a portrait, in the studio or outdoors. Once you begin, just go with the passion and spirit in you as you work with the pastels. Don’t worry about what others may or may not say about your style and don’t paint “for sale”. Don’t worry - these are the only don’ts! Look around you, right now, and see what arouses your interest. It’s amazing what simple household items can be turned into inspiring art. Take a camera with you when you go out and take LOTS of pictures. It’s the beauty of digital – you can load them up on the computer and discard what isn’t encouraging. The beauty of pastels is that they are very forgiving and they are there to be played with. So, go and have fun. I hope you have gained a good working insight into the world of pastels and it has inspired you to pick up your pastel stick and begin.

http://paintingwithpastels.com



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Pastel technique secrets

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