What do we know about pastels, except that they are the same crayons Degas used to paint his charming ballerinas? Let’s get to the bottom of it!
Pastel is a rather simple, but at the same time quite expressive material. Colors come out bright and saturated, and from the tools of the artist need only your own fingers.
Forget about brushes, palettes and thinners!
It turns out that you need a few pastel crayons and a sheet of paper. No other materials will give you the opportunity to make colorful sketches as easily and quickly as pastels.
To make pastels, dry pigments, chalk and a binder are mixed together until a thick paste-like substance is obtained. This is then used to form bars and dried until completely hardened. Accordingly, pastel is practically a pigment in its purest form.
But not everything is so simple, there are some technical peculiarities in working with pastels. Ordinary paper is not suitable for working with pastels, the surface of the paper must be rough. It is in this case pastel has perfect color rendering and does not crumble.
Let’s summarize what advantages pastels have:
Mobility: essentially only paper and crayons are needed. There are no specific techniques and rules of work: apply and mix colors as you like.
Illustration will always be bright and saturated: pastel does not burn out in the sun, does not fade and does not change its color over time, unlike other materials.
Colors perfectly convey all the nuances: soft transitions from color to color, give an incredible result – it is easy to portray even portraits.
“Velvety”: visually, pastels create a beautiful texture reminiscent of velvet fabric.
The only thing you should always remember about the specifics of the paper and take into account that loose pastels can crumble or smudge. It should either be drawn on a rough surface or framed under glass.
Pastel is applied to the surface very easily: there is no need to press hard on the crayon, the lines come out soft, with uneven and loose edges. This is how the unique pastel softness inherent only to this material appears.
Also the uniqueness of pastel is that it does not burn out in sunlight, is not afraid of temperature changes, does not crack and does not fade.
If you always take into account the features of the material, the work will be kept in perfect condition for a long time. It is important to remember that with any touch, the colorful layer is destroyed, and when trying to preserve pastel with various fixers and varnishes, it irrevocably fades.