Pastel Painting Lessons & Techniques
How to Begin With Pastels - The Benefits of Learning Something New
By Emma Ralph
If you are interested to learn how to begin with pastels, you will find it to be an exciting alternative to oil painting. Oil painting is quite difficult, requires more time, and has to be handled carefully, because you can easily smear or mess up your painting if you are not careful. Every layer needs time to dry before you are able to add the next layer. At the end of the session, the whole thing has to be cleaned by using turpentine. Completed work needs around a year to dry, which for busy people, is really too long to wait. As a solution, pastels can be used as an alternative. By reading these benefits, you can choose whether or not you are destined to begin the exciting journey of using pastels:
Benefit 1: The mess of pastels. A very typical reason why artists don't like pastels. This can be easily overcome with a few basic procedures such as laying newspaper down under the easel and any excess can be cleaned up with a vacuum cleaner.
Benefit 2: Pastels offer a wide variety of color, texture, and shade variations, simply by changing techniques and sticks - no need to mix paints before applying.
Benefit 3: If you have the required space in your house, you can start up anywhere with your artwork, where you can spend 5 to 10 min whenever you are free to work on your pastel masterpiece.
Benefit 4: Because there is no drying time, pastels allow you to create more works of art in less time.
Benefit 5: You need very little in the way of tools - the pastels, a piece of water color paper and a cloth for your hands and you're good to go.
When you begin with pastel artwork, you want to start with your larger areas first, using these techniques:
1. Design a rough sketch using hard pastels, charcoal or pastel pencils. Plan the design in the way you want the artwork to be at the end before you continue further.
2. First, color up the big areas using the side of your pastel stick.
3. Show variations in pressure to get different effects.
Once you are done working on the big areas of artwork you can concentrate on the sensitive work and procedures of the smaller areas, which are mentioned below:
1. You can use a paper stump to blend, smooth and smear colors.
2. Mix multiple colors to give different variations of shades and texture.
3. Give the soft effect to two adjacent areas of colors by erasing the line strokes which are not needed.
4. Try scumbling, which is the technique of layering one color over another. This too will add depth and texture to important areas in your artwork.
Additional tips to add beauty to your pastel artwork:
1. Consider trying different surfaces, like cardboard, to grow your pastel abilities. Hint here: The surface needs some "tooth" for the pastel to grab.
2. Mix and match mediums. In addition to using pastels, add some oil paints or charcoal to your artwork (of course if you use oils you will have to wait for them to dry).
3. Frame all of your pastel artwork in frames that match your artwork appropriately.
I hope that after reviewing the benefits of trying this new art form and a few easy to use techniques, you'll now know how to begin with pastels. After you've practiced pastels for awhile, you'll have an entire collection of stunning pastel artwork to frame and display for many to cherish.
Emma Ralph is an experienced pastel artist and author of the book "Pastel Painting Secrets". To learn more about how to begin with pastels visit www.paintingwithpastels.com.
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