Pastel Painting Lessons & Techniques

Pastel Painting Palette, What You Will Need

By Stella Coles

Before buying any pastels, have you considered the type of paintings you're going to do? Will you be painting landscapes, still life or seascapes. Or maybe abstract, portraits or animals? You see, for different topics you'll need different palettes.

I tend to always paint seascapes and landscapes, so I know my colours off by heart, but I still love to go into an art shop and look at their compartments full of pastels of every shade and hue. I just love bringing home colours that I know are going to look good portraying trees and leaves, flowers and plants, or maybe stormy seas. Then again, what about a beautiful beach scene with palm trees? You'll soon get to know what you need.

You can buy pastels from good art supply shops and from companies on-line. I buy some things from on-line catalogues, because they can be good value, especially when I buy mounts in bulk, or canvases for my acrylic paintings. I do buy pastels as well, but if you're starting out, you'd probably be best to go to shops because then you'll get to see the colours first - hand and you won't be disappointed if you receive colours in the post that differ to what you thought.

To begin with I would suggest the following, and you can always add more if you decide you like using pastels and want to carry on. There are expensive makes, such as Kremer which retail at around £2 each, (2009), and you can buy Sennelier pastels which are extra soft and they retail at around the same price. Rembrandt sell a good range retailing at around £1.50 each. Another good make is Daler Rowney which are ideal for beginners as they retail for around £1.30 each and oil pastels around 60p. Faber -Castell make good square soft pastels.

Unison make good selection boxes which work out at a reasonable cost. They come in packs pertaining to the topic you want to paint, so it takes the work out of deciding which colours you'll need to choose. Their packs include "landscape, portrait, starter,heavenly,turquoise and light. Brilliant. Remember that different makers will name the pastels differently sometimes, which is why it is good to buy from a shop first to make sure you're not buying 2 with very similar hues.

The colours below are for soft and hard pastels. Oil pastels some in lots of colours and sets too, so if you prefer to try them instead, you'll be able to buy the same colours, but again, choose from a shop to start with so you can look at them and see what tones they are.
Always have lots of soft, white pastels. They are so handy for highlighting.

For seascapes to begin with:

To begin with: French Ultramarine, turquoise, prussian blue, sap green, paynes grey, white, turquoise blue, and a pale violet like ultramarine violet, and a darker shade. For beaches and rocks,you'll need raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, burnt umber, black and maybe olive green.

For landscapes to begin with:

Olive green, raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, green-grey,grass green, yellow green, black, sepia, and shades for the sky, pale hues of grey like cool grey, maybe palest blue hues like phthalo blue, palest yellow like lemon yellow, a darker blue, maybe cerulean blue, and lots of white. You can add a pale violet, and of course if sunsets, you'd need to keep a red such as crimson lake, bright yellow such as cadmium yellow, and maybe an orange like cadmium orange. Of course if you want flowers, add colours you need.

You can also find tones suitable for flesh, and remember that you'll need differing hues because of the differing tones in portraits or body paintings.

Any pastel paper is ideal and it comes with different textures. Ingres paper has a stripy texture. Mi - teintes has a honey - comb grain and they come in lots of colours. You can buy pastel boards and pastel cards. You can use water - colour paper or glass paper, as they have a texture. I prefer to use a heavy - quality cartridge paper, but that's because I don't like to see a texture to my paintings, however, if you use a coloured paper, you can leave bits exposed under the pastel to give an effect.

I hope this has been helpful, and will encourage you to give them a try. They really are worth it.

Stella is an artist living on the Isle of Wight. Over the years she has taught herself various techniques of painting with different mediums. Her favourite mediums are pastels and acrylics. See more info here: http://allthingsartbypastella.blogspot.com She is happiest when painting the beautiful landscapes and seascapes on the island with her beloved dog beside her. She is happy to give advice and tips. To get an idea of results in pastels and acrylics visit http://www.landscapeartbystella.com/

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