There are many forms of art in the world: sculpture, photography, architecture, dance, and even sowing and knitting! The most common medium conveyor used for thousands of year would have to be anything using a 2D format, be it a rock, a wood plank, or even paper. The paper mediums such as lead, charcoal, acrylic and oil paints are some of the oldest ones. But another medium often overlooked, so much so that many people remain unaware of its existence, is pastel. Made of pure, untainted pigments shaped into a small stick and held together by a type of binder called paste, from when comes the name ‘ pastel ’, this medium is sure enough one of the most intriguing ones out there for more than one reason.

THE TYPES OF PASTELS

Let us begin with the simple enough basics of pastels. Like paint, there are a variety of types of pastels, more often referred to as either hard pastels or soft pastels. Hard pastels contain a higher proportion of binder, which by consequence renders the pastel harder, as paste is denser than pigment. They are unable to release as much pigment as other types of pastels because they simply do not have the pigments to release. A hard pastel consists of more binder than actual pigment. Because of this, hard pastels are often used for rough work and, as some artists call them, are the workhorse of a painting. (Yes, a pastel piece is referred to as a ‘ painting ’ and the act of using pastels, ‘ pastel painting ’.)

Soft pastels, like the name suggests, are softer than hard pastels in comparison to the way they smooth out on a surface’s ‘tooth’. The name tooth is given to the texture of the material upon which the pastel is applied. For example, a piece of sand paper would be referred to as having a lot of tooth, whereas a glossy paper would have slim to none. Pastels in particular need large amounts of tooth to remain in position.

Soft pastels contain the least amount of binder than any other pastel, and some top class brands, such a Unison and Schmincke, use next to none. We will return to talk about these brands later on in this article.

Soft pastels are often preferred over hard ones by the majority of pastelists around the world because of their rich, vibrant colours. The main aspect of a pastel painting is more often not the subject itself, but the colours that compose it. Seeing as pastels contain the purest colours of any art medium, no other art medium such as acrylic or even oil pastels can compete with their colours. This brings us to an interesting point: the variety of colours in the pastel medium.
Recently, pastel sticks have been converted into a circular pan form called PanPastels. Seeing as the pastels, or pigments rather, are not in stick form, various painting tools exist to spread this pastel around. This new form of pastel is slowly starting to become revolutionary and I have been lucky enough to be given a few colours of the brand by some close friends of mine. However, I will not speak of these pastels as of yet, as I have next to no experience using them in comparison to stick form pastels (you know, the ones we used in the good old days!).

ALL SHAPES AND SIZES

As explained before, pastels come in stick format for efficient and comfortable use. How else would a person be able to apply pigments to paper with enough pressure that they would not simply fall off? Assuming, of course, we ignore PanPastels for the sake of argument.

But there are many types of forms in which pastels can be made, starting from rectangular sticks (often student grade pastels) to circular sticks, from thin to thick, short to long. Regularly, pastel sticks are about 2 ½ inch long, close to 1 cm in diameter (the length and width may vary for handmade pastels due to the human nature of the process) and circular shaped, but professional brands offer several different sizes such as jumbo sticks (about three times bigger than regular sticks) and half-sticks, evidently the length of half a stick. Jumbo sticks are preferred by artists who use a lot of one single colour or work on large mediums, or even for those who enjoy focusing on backgrounds, which often take much space in a painting and may contain little colour combinations.

Half-sticks are often sold in sets in order to allow artists to double the amount of colour they have at their disposal without paying double the price. For example, an artist could choose to buy a set of 60 half-stick pastels in comparison to 30 full-stick pastels for the same price. The only downside to half-sticks is that, although they usually contain enough pigment to last a very long while, they are very awkward to handle and do not come with a wrapper (a very useful and overlooked piece of a pastel) which dirties fingers much easier than those which do. But if colour is worth the suffering, then half-stick sets might be for you!

Another, more convenient type of pastel that is actually a type of hard pastel, is the pastel pencil. Like regular pencils, these are made with cylinder pastel sticks embedded in a piece of wood. Often used for small details due to their ability to be sharpened easily with the use of a common pencil sharpener, pastel pencils are quite useful for many artists. I especially love the way they allow me to draw thin lines as well as smudge without ruining any other detail. A finger to smudge is great and all, but not for the finer things in art.

THE COLOUR WHEEL

Unlike any other art medium, excluding oil pastels, soft pastels (I will now refer to both hard and soft pastels as merely pastels unless stated otherwise) cannot be mixed easily or at all. Mixing is often confused by artists as the ability to smudge the pigments together, as even though the technique gives the illusion that colours are mixing, they are merely overlapping each other. In short, pigments cannot be mixed to create a new colour. Because of this characteristic, a wide variety of pastel colours are readily available at art stores across the world. However, because of the scarcity of pastel users, as well as the long lifespan of a set of pastels (I have had a set of 48 pastels for over three years and only one colour had ever needed to be replaced – my flesh tone), not many art stores support pastels or have only a limited variety of brands. For a curious artist such as I, always searching to improve my pallet of pastels, this fact can be a very stressful thing to accept.

As I am writing this, I am awaiting an order of a wooden boxed set of 90 Rembrandt pastels that I had to resort to buying online for no store within 100 miles carried the product. Shipping in itself costs approximately a full 40$. You can imagine my rage when I saw the cost of the bill… Ah, the things I go through for my art…
Many pastel brands contain a wide variety of colours, some up to 512. However, because of the difference in recipes, as they are called, used to make these colours, some pastel colours have a higher light fastness than others.

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

For any pastelist, light fastness is an essential factor to consider before purchasing pastels, especially for professionals. Let’s take a famous example. Edgar Degas, one of the most known pastel artists ever to live created his works during the nineteenth century until his death in 1917. His works today, although old, are still as lively and vibrant as when they were first painted. This is possible due to the high tolerance of the pigments towards light, natural or other wise.

For lesser art connoisseurs, you have probably once come across a pack of paper having been left near a window for a reasonable amount of time. When picked up, you might have noticed the yellowing of the paper in comparison to those at the bottom of the stack, unaffected by the presence of light. We call this effect the light fastness, or lack there of, of the paper. But this effect is no only restricted to paper, many items including pigment can yellow over time, and with a colour-focused pastel, low levels of pigment light fastness can be a deadly mistake.

TO FIX OR NOT TO FIX?

Ah, here we are: the most stressful question a pastelist will ever have to ask himself once his painting is done. Shall the pastel be sprayed with a fixative, or left to say untouched to be framed? Or maybe even both!

To my knowledge, pastel is the only medium that requires the use of fixatives during the painting process. Most paper mediums can be fixed when they are finished to keep the paintings safe, but pastel paintings often require the frequent use of fixative spray. This is due to the saturation of colours rather than layering as, unlike wet mediums, pastels do not have formal layering and the pastel colours can overlap each other without ruining the bottom layer. Saturation occurs when the tooth of a material becomes incapable of holding anymore pigment, for all the creases that compose the tooth are full. Using a fixative allows the artist to leave a fine transparent layer above the pastel and to continue pastel painting over it. The spray’s coating becomes a second set of tooth. You can think of it as starting on a fresh sheet of paper without having to restart from scratch. So why is there such a big deal over fixatives?

Depending on which kind of fixative is used, the most common two being ‘ permanent finish ’ and ‘ reworkable ’ fixatives, the colours will darken and fade, something to be avoided at all cost. Using spray while working on a pastel, particularly after the rough phase of a piece, is encouraged as the tone of earlier colours is less important than the ones on the final layers. Out of the two types of fixatives, reworkable is preferred as it allows the artist to continue smudging the pigments underneath all while restoring the grip of the paper. In comparison, reworkable fixatives are also less likely to darken the pure colours and dull the bright ones. Permanent finish however should be avoided at all cost. Ignore the name; this fixative will surely ruin a beautiful pastel, it isn’t worth it.

As you can tell, although fixatives can be quite useful during the artistic process, they are quite the drag for a finished work, which is why many professional artists will choose to avoid fixatives at all, encasing their pastels underneath glass framing. It is in fact highly encourage keeping pastel works under glass, as they can be kept much longer than other paints before being affected by surrounding air, and some, if made with good quality pastels, might last forever. However, it is also important to know that the moisturizing effect of fixatives can cause mold and fungus to grow onto the pastel. I have never personally encountered this problem, although it is important to restrict the amount of fixative used on a pastel piece.

PAPER TALK

Throughout all this talk of pastels, I have nearly forgotten to speak about one of the most important aspects of pastels; the paper! The brand of paper used directly affects the overall outcome of a pastel. From experience I have learned that paper made specifically for pastels have more ‘tooth’ which causes a smooth picture difficult to make. I personally prefer dry medium paper made especially for pencil, charcoal and pastel. Chances are that because they are more flexible in their range of mediums they will allow more flexibility for an artist, especially a beginner. My current favourite brand of paper is Canson, particularly the Classic Cream colour. I prefer the cream colour to the pure white as, let’s face it, any beginner artist should know that the first rule of colour is that pure white does not exist. By coloring onto a pure white surface, you are putting yourself into unnecessary trouble. Pure white also dirties much faster than cream, a real annoyance for many artists (especially as artists usually use pure white in order to use it’s ‘cleanliness’ – it doesn’t last long).

The weight of paper, that little numbered ‘lb’ sign on the front of most artist-grade art pads, is very significant to any artist, though mostly to wet medium artists. The weight of the paper shows, well, the weight of the paper, but mostly the density, thickness, and ability to warp when humid. These factors are important to artists in order to avoid the worst fear of accidentally tearing a piece while working on it. This has happened to me several times before and unlike canvas fabric, it can not be easily fixed, or at all. Usually the heavier the paper, the better the quality, but it should be noted that at too high a weight paper will be considered card stock, which although better than lighter papers, is somewhat more difficult to work on. Since pastel is a dry medium, I would encourage artists to search for pads between 70lb and 100lb, 90lb being my ideal weight for pastel works as although they are dry, pastel works in their entirety are quite heavier than other dry mediums and need to support that weight.

CHOOSING A BRAND

Like any other product, people will try to market them in several fashions for money. Because of this, there are quite possibly over a hundred pastel brands, most of them being student grade or even, to me at least, worthless products that should never have seen the light of day. (Not that they’d survive to see that light with their horrible light fastness rating I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist.) Student grade pastels, like the ones I currently use, or even the ones you might find in an elementary school art class, are godlike in comparison. Out of the hundred of brands, there are probably only about a dozen worth mentioning and only three or so seem to be made especially for serious pastelists. Those top three for reasons I will explain further, are Unison, Schmincke, and Sennelier, from best quality to least respectably. Most people would ask ‘why not just get the best quality available then?’ Well, my friend, with great quality comes a great price, by which I mean they are very costly.

THE STARVING ARTIST

All the listed pastels are soft pastels, with Unison being the softest of them all. This attribute adds to the cost of a pastel, as pigments are quite more expensive than binder and a higher percentage of pigment is used in these pastels rather than binder. This is the reason why there are so many awful brands of pastels. Manufacturers do not want to waste money on something expensive if they can replace that something with little difference. But this is a different, a very big one.

Another reason for the high cost of the quality pastel is to cover the price of person-hours. That’s right! These pastels are all handmade; hand-rolled, hand-cut, and hand-labeled. There is practically no use of a machine in the manufacturing of these particular pastels. For a small comparison, a pack of 48 Loew-Cornell pastels costs around 25$. That’s .50$ per stick! For Schmincke, the second best brand around, the market price is 4.50$ per stick, 9 times a higher price than my current pastels, though I admit they are tenfold better than any pastel I have ever tried. Unison pastels, for the ultimate comparison, well, let’s just say 2,000$ for a full set of Unison pastels is being very generous.

Although these prices pretty much uphold the saying of the ‘starving artist’, I highly suggest investing in a good brand of pastels if one is a serious painter. The cost may be a tad high and I have even been told by peers that the prices were ‘ridiculous’, and perhaps they are, but we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good, don’t we? However, it may calm the nerves of underprivileged artists to know that it is not necessary to buy specific sets as, although the price is smaller by bundle, many of the colours in sets you might barely ever touch. Hand choosing specific colours is ideal for a pastelist, as he or she will know the colours used the best and possibly save a few bucks along the way. For people such as I, indecisive or maybe just lazy, it is better to get readily available sets that come in a variety of ‘themes’ such as portrait, landscape, seascape, and things of the like.

It is also important to mix as many brands as possible when doing a pastel, as they often compliment each other in the most interesting of ways. For example, like hard pastels, Rembrandts can be used as a workhorse, to colour the background layers, whereas Schmincke can be used as a final touch because of its smoothness. I for one do plan on buying more brands as I improve and see the need there, but for now I am planning on getting my workhouse and building up upon that with individual colours I might need afterwards.

GETTING STARTED

If pastel painting interests you, or any other form of art for that matter, it’s always best to try out before committing your time (and money) into whatever you plan on doing. Pastels are not cheap; they are among some of the most expensive art supplies next to oil paints, so it is always important to know what you want and don’t want before putting your money into a set of pastels. Most professional art stores offer individual pastels for sale at a decent price, for a beginner at least. But getting a few random colours is never nearly enough for a starting pastelist, or even for one wanting to experiment the medium. Student grade pastel sets exist in those stores for a convenient enough price (remember, I got myself a set of 48 pastels for under 40$), and for curious starters, a set of 12 pastels should be enough to get the feel of what the medium is. If one enjoys the feel, they should upgrade gradually.

The first time I began using pastels was for my freshman year art class. I had told my father about our latest project – a pastel reproduction of a Degas artwork – and he became instantly enthralled. Without asking me, he had bought me two sets of pastel, one set of 24 chalk pastels and 12 soft pastels. I despised the chalk pastels with all my heart. They were too light for my liking, breakable and surprisingly hard. If you were or are one of those students who never enjoyed drawing on the chalkboard because of the ear piercing screech and horrifying amount of dust, do not get these. I then began using the soft pastels as they had more vibrant colours than the chalk ones, which if I recall correctly were much too bright to be taken seriously, and immediately fell in love.

In short, it is important to try out different kinds of pastels if one does not enjoy one particular brand. Often it is not the medium itself that annoys artists, but the quality of it.
With over a hundred pastel brands, it is nearly guaranteed than an artist will find one they love, or at least like, though it must be known that higher priced pastels will definitely amount to better results as well as connection between artist and medium.

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

I won’t lie, and neither will any other artist out there (until they’re trying to make a hefty profit off of you by promising you instant success, of course). Making art is a difficult task and it takes a lot of dedication and practice to get from where you started to where
you want to be, and this applies to every artist. For some people, this ‘road’ can be as short as learning to draw a straight line, or as long as aiming to become the world’s greatest artist. I wouldn’t suggest the latter, but neither would I suggest ever stopping on your road to success. Many obstacles will await you as an artist, that is inevitable; art blocks, harsh criticism, lack of confidence in one’s abilities, and so and so. In order to overcome these obstacles, it is always important to remember these following tips:

Practice art constantly! Some even have it as a double life - Hello there! - nearly putting as much time into their art as their own jobs, assuming of course the job in question is not that of an artist. I cannot stress this enough; without practice, you will see no improvement. If you draw from your childhood up until 12 years old, stop, and decide to pick up art 10 years later, chances are your art skills will be relatively the same as when you were but a 12-year-old. No adult artist enjoys being told their work looks like that of a child. I’m sure no one in their right mind would either.

Don’t let criticism get you down! In fact, embrace it! Sure, comments can sometimes cause an artist to feel lower than dirt. When we are proud of something we put our heart and soul into, it isn’t easy to accept that we might have made a few mistakes along the way Although, one must remember that no matter how harsh a comment is, if there is constructive criticism, it is useful to the artist. Whether an artist decides to use this advice is up to them, but it is always better to at least try to understand your mistakes before starting up another work.

Keep your mind fresh and open! Part of being an artist is having an open mind. The second part is having an open mind full of creative ideas. Try to find your muse, something that will encourage your creativity in the best of ways. For some, this can be done through reading books; for others, it is music. For me, it varies from my mood, though I always find it easier to paint when I am painting a story, or at least a character of a story.

Believe in yourself! And I’m not saying that to sound cheesy, but really, you can do it if you truly wish it so! When I was young, no matter what I was told by my brother, my classmates, and peers in general, I kept on doing what I loved, but most important of all, I believed in myself. A friend of mine is another artist who wants to one day major in game character design. He absolutely loves to draw but declares himself under average or ‘not ready to expose his art yet’. For years now I have tried to encourage him to join an online art site, but is still reluctant to do so.

Meet other artists! Creating relations with people who share your interest is always important for an artist, for many reasons. For one, without comparison, how is an artist supposed to know what is good and what is not? How can an artist learn to improve when he or she does not have any standards to surmount? A second reason for more aggressive artists, such as I, would be competition. They say art isn’t about competition, and it isn’t really. After all, art cannot be so easily judged. For some artists, however, it is important to compete with others, to learn from them in an attempt to become better themselves. A third reason would obviously be for advice, especially when looking for some on rare mediums, like, in fact, pastels.

Don’t throw out your old stuff! Trust me, you’ll be glad you kept them when you dig them back up a decade later. Besides, wouldn’t it be the worst possible thing to find out some homeless person got hold of your art and ended up a millionaire? Yeah, think about that. When I look back at my old drawings today, I think to myself ‘Wow, is this really something I drew?’ and I then I laugh. Keeping your old stuff, no matter how ridiculous it may be, is always rewarding to an artist. It is also incredibly useful when an artist is feeling down or having doubt in his or her abilities. Just take a good long look at that first stick figure of yours and compare your artwork from now to then. No doubt, you’ll feel up and ready in no time.

If after all these tips you still don’t feel good enough to be an artist, then I apologize for having wasted your time. For any other artist having read this, I hope you have found out some interesting in-sight on the world of pastels and what being an artist is all about. Just remember, like any other art form, pastel is all about experimentation! With so many techniques and combinations of pastels, softness and hardness, shapes of sticks even, the possibilities are endless; it’s just a matter of finding the right ones!

Please remember that I am not a genie, nor am I a genius; I am but a simple artist trying to spread the good word of pastels to the others who seek it! (You are seeking it, aren't you?) And now I bit you adieu. Until next time, this has been Michy B. introducing you to the world of pastels!