Pastel Painting Techniques
Are you keen about painting and especially pastel painting? Yes, it is very interesting hobby and profession. Pastels can be used in different ways and each of the pastel painting techniques can be used as a separate technique, or combine two or more to produce the best pastel color paintings. Definitely, there is nothing like some way is right or wrong. As with increasing options in 
painting, it comes to what one enjoys with their pastel. Pastel color painting is not same as that with watercolors, oil colors or acrylics. Instead, you need to use pastel colored pencils or oil pastels. The oil pastels are nothing but the pastel colored pencils with ingredients like wax and inert oil. If you are a beginner and wishing to learn pastel painting tips, then you are supposed to learn about different qualities of materials. The pastel paper is rougher than the one that is used for water painting or acrylic painting. The pastel paints are not chalks and they are just pencils with a pure powdered pigment.
What is pastel color?
Pastel colors are simply colors that hide within the names like pale, soft, and washed-out. When you check them on a saturation scale, these pastel colors are darker than the white one and lighter than light colored ones. These colors have a lot of associations with spring and easter times. Since the time of the Renaissance, the pastel colors have been used by the artists and from then, it has gained considerable popularity during the 18th century. The notable artists made this pastel color painting as the primary medium of communication to deliver certain special information. The artwork that is made up of pastels is called pastel or pastel color paintings or pastel drawing. The term pastel is used as the verb to produce an art by using pastels. It is also meant as pale in color. Pastel sticks or crayons encompass pure powdered pigment combined with a binder. The precise composition and characteristics of a personal pastel stick depends on the sort of pastel and also the type and quantity of binder used. It conjointly varies by individual manufacturers. The pastel color paintings are on the market in varied degrees of hardness, the softer varieties being wrapped in paper. Some pastel brands use a pumice stone within the binder to abrade the paper and build a lot of chances.
Why these colors are called pastel colors?
These colors are referred to as “pastel” when the art medium of a similar name. The pastel could be a stick enclosing a pigment in the form of powder, that is blended along with a binder. The binder has neutral hue and low saturation point that provides the pigment its light-weight, subdued quality. Pastel colors are usually accustomed denote the spring. Every color symbolizes a unique 
side of each of these seasons. Green is known as the color of growing plants. It represents renewal, birth, and hope. Pastel orange symbolizes the dawn and begin of a brand new day. Orange is that the color of transition and might additionally represent the beginning of the new season. Pink is taken into account a kittenish color and, like orange, represents a brand new starting. It additionally signifies femininity. Pastel yellow is commonly accustomed represent joy. Pastel purples represent the sacred in nature. It can even be accustomed represent femininity. Blue is considered as the color of harmony, calmness, and peace. Hence, there is a reason behind every pastel color painting.
What are pastel media?
The dry pastel media are divided into four main sub-types called Pan Pastels, hard pastels, soft pastels and pastel pencils.
Pan Pastels: The pan pastels are developed with a minimum of binder in flat compacts and applied with special sponge tools with a soft micro-porous material. There is no liquid used to prepare these. The Pan Pastels are used for the whole painting or together with soft and laborious sticks.
Hard pastels: The hard pastels have less pigment and higher binder content, manufacturing a pointy drawing material that is helpful for fine details. These are used with various other pastels to draw outlines and add accents. These are historically used to produce the preliminary sketching and dry pastel painting out of a composition. But, the colors are less brilliant and are available in a very restricted aim contrast to soft pastels.
Soft pastels: It is the primary type of pastel and these sticks have higher pigment content with less binder. This leads to developing brighter colors. The pastel color painting is promptly smeared and mixed, however it ends up in the next proportion of mud. The finished art made from soft pastels need a certain type of protection like covering it with a glass or frame. White chalk could also be used as a filler in manufacturing pale and bright hues with bigger luminance.
Pastel Pencils: These pastel pencils are developed with pastel leads, which are used to add finer details to your art.
Based on the manufacturing type, the pastel colors are of two types, namely water soluble pastels and oil pastels.
Water soluble pastel: These are almost like soft pastel but Polyethylene glycol, a water soluble component is present in them. With this, the colors can be thinned out to a very even and semi-transparency consistency with a water wash. These are made in a fixed and restricted range of colors in strong combinations. They have the benefits of sanctioning straightforward mixing and combining of the hues, given their fluids, likewise as permitting a variety of color tint effects relying upon the quantity of water applied with a brush to the operating surface.
Oil Pastel: Oil Pastel has a soft, consistency and huge intense colors. They are very dense and fill each pixel of the paper. They are little tough to blend when compared to soft pastels. By thinning with turpentine, they can be easily spread across the artwork’s surface.
About Pastel Painting techniques
Definitely, Pastel color painting is an art and is completely different from other types of oil paintings, or acrylic paintings. So, it is very important to learn certain pastel painting techniques, especially if you are a beginner.
- The simple pastel painting tip is to use these pastel colors and draw by just holding like a pen or pencil and mark with its tip. The resultant line has nice expression, transfer a way of the gesture you created. Alter the thickness of the road by varying the pressure you are applying to the dry pastel color. The more durable you press, the more of pastels you’ll be putt down on the sheet. For agent lines, press a lot of gently or use the sting. Use your whole arm, not simply your gliding joint, as this encourages broader, looser drawing.
If you have done any drawing, then implementing this technique can be acquainted. In reality it is best suited to pastel pencils or onerous pastel sticks. Hatching has been just a group of parallel lines, ideally fine lines drawn closely along. Cross-hatching is simply the next step, drawing a second set of lines at an associate degree angle and usually right angles. This methodology is very helpful in pastel painting for the initial obstruction in of a pastel color painting. It permits you to experiment with color and tone in a very loose, versatile approach while not totally committing to a final composition. You will be able to use this methodology to make a way of form and form by varied the direction of the cross-hatching.- If you need to finish the work quickly, making giant color blocks, use the aspect of a pastel color stick. For better results break a stick and use that. Ensure that even the tiniest fragment of pastel remains usable. Altering the pressure can produce totally different degrees of texture on the pastel paper. Once the aspect of the pastel has worn down, giving 2 sharp edges, it can even be accustomed produce fine lines. This technique is often best suited for soft and semi-soft pastels.
- Unlike different mediums, pastels don’t seem to be mixed before golf stroke them on the paper. There are 2 ways in which to make color and tonal variations — optical mixing, that is achieved by having colors in shutting proximity, and mixing, wherever the pastel mixes on the paper. You have a good alternative of tools to use for mixing, though the standard one is that the finger. Conjointly out there are: the aspect of the hand – helpful for big areas of mixing, however, not smart for precise results; paper tools like the tortillon, torchon, and paper stump; putty rubbers, cloths, and cotton One of the best blessings of pastels over different mediums is that the resonance you’ll deliver the goods with color. Presumably the most effective technique for obtaining this is often by scumbling. Once a layer of pastel has been applied, and fixed, gently drag a soft pastel on its aspect across the highest. This creates a broken covering of the new color over the highest. The result’s visually stimulating and really textural, and careful alternative of colors can turn out wonderful results. This technique works best with the soft soft pastels.
- Feathering may be a fine-tuned variety of hatching exploitation short strokes. The result’s rather like scumbling — it will provide a resonance to a painting. The feather will work for an optical mixture of color wherever the attention mixes the colors along instead of mixing them on the paper. This technique is very smart for giving the looks of brightness of the material, feathers, and scales, or for making region effects with lightweight. Hold a pastel color over the block and scrape the surface of the stick to make dirt. Once you’re proud of the arrangement of dirt on the paper, use a flat spatula to press the dirt into the surface.
- It’s abundant easier to try this with the painting command horizontally – the pastel dirt can fall specifically wherever you would like it, and not contaminate the remainder of the image. Ensure the spatula is actually clean before attempting this, and so though you progress the knife around to a small degree but it will not mix the colors along.
Try these pastel painting tips for the best drawing.
