introduction

Still Waters
11" × 17" (28cm × 43cm)

Painting with pastel is the most direct way of applying color to a surface. Pastels are made of the same pigments as oil paint and watercolors, but the pure color is only mixed with enough binder to hold it in stick form. Rather than brushing on a liquid mixture and waiting for it to dry, and possibly change colors, the artist working with pastel applies the dry pigment directly to the surface.

It is this immediacy of application that makes the medium so enticing. Open a box of pastels, and the brilliant array of colors tempts you to pick up a stick and make a mark. Once begun, the visual rewards are so great that it’s almost impossible to stop.

Like many artists, I moved from my childhood love of drawing and coloring with crayons to painting with oils. It was many years later that I discovered pastels. It seemed to me that paintings in pastel had an unusual luminosity and brilliance, a special quality of color I’d never been able to achieve in oils. I bought a set of pastels and began learning how to use them, and I’ve never let them go.

What I loved then and still love about pastels is that you can use them to draw as you would with a crayon or pencil, and you can stroke with the side of the pastel as you would with a brush. The color of the pastel is the color it will be on the paper—but layering, blending, glazing and many other techniques we’re about to explore offer a world of possibilities in the use of the color.

People often ask why I say I paint with pastels rather than draw with them. You can certainly draw with them, and painters as far back as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) have done so, using one or more sticks of pastel and drawing as one would with a pencil. Drawing is a matter of line, however, while painting deals more with shapes, masses and color. When you use pastels in this way and cover the surface with pigment, the result is a painting.

Pastel is a forgiving medium: If you change your mind, it’s easy to rework. The techniques necessary to begin producing pleasing paintings are easy to learn, and yet the possibilities of the medium are endless and can provide challenges for years to come. The demonstrations and explanations in this book will get you well on your way to painting in pastels.

Versatility, immediacy, luminosity, brilliance, ease of use—all these are attributes of working in pastel, but probably the most important of all is that it’s just a lot of fun!