Pastels Are Quick Drying And Vibrant!…

Pastels are a dry medium, with a surface which is powdery, which seems to reflect the light easily. They also emit very intense colouring, more really than any other medium. To put it in a nutshell, pastels are a colourful way of painting, but they also have great strength.

One advantage with these is, that you do not have to wait for the paint to dry, because this is a dry medium. As for artists, this can be quite trying, having to be patient. This being so, you can go directly with your pastels and colour your surface straightaway.

They will last longer too than oil paints and will not crack, or in fact yellow with age, as there is no oil or varnish included in the mixture.

Degas used this form of medium quite significantly for his artworks, which demonstrated how vibrant the colours can appear with the movement of colour and light showing throughout his work. Personally I loved his pictures of racehorses and ballet dancers.

It is an interesting fact that pastels from the 18th Century are in such good condition today. Retaining their freshness and vibrant colours. If you want to frame them, the pastel must not touch the glass, so you need a passe partout mat to place it on.

In actual fact, strangely enough, the pigments in pastel paints are just the same as the ones used in oil and watercolours. The main difference is how they are produced. For example, watercolours are made by mixing gum with pigment and pastels have chalk and water mixed with the pigment so that it forms a paste. Oil paints consist of finely mixed pigment with oil.

When pastels are manufactured, after the colour has been checked and sometimes more pigments added, the paste has to be pounded to remove the air in it. Then it can be shaped into long, round, strips which then can be cut into short lengths for pastels.

They then need to go through the drying process, before they can be labelled and packed into boxes, with care, before they get damaged.

The strength of the pastel lies in how much of the binding agent has been applied to the actual mix. This will affect the type of markings the pastel will make. Some companies in the past did not bother to use a binding agent when they produced pastels. Rowneys, for one example, and I have to say that these lasted well and had a softness about them.

The tints vary, as for instance, if you have a lot of chalk in the mix, the pigment will be pale, by the same token if there is not much chalk in the mix, the tint will be darker. So, the strength of pastel colours is produced by the chalk factor mixed with pastel. As you can see, there will be varying tints in the colour range.

These come grade from light to dark colour tints. I can only suggest that you study some of the Degas paintings. Anyone could only get inspired by these and the fantastic details incorporated to this very day.