Tastes of Culture

It is not easy when you first start using pastels. You may find it quite trying to make adjustments to your work. We are led to believe that really you cannot! Frustrating perhaps too, because marks do not disappear as if you were using a pencil.

Normal rubber erasers do not work. They can ruin it for you. They are damaging as they remove your paper surface. What can you do?

First most of the actual pigment has to be removed, leaving you with just a very feint line. How can you achieve this successfully? Personally, I would say to use a plastic rubber and on your surface itself, just dab it.

It is possible you have all you already need, if you have a fresh, white loaf in the house. This will serve you well if it is rolled into a small ball, but if you only have little mistakes to correct I would just try rubbing my finger over them on soft pastels.

Move your finger both backwards and forwards. Hopefully this will not then damage your surface. Another common fact is that people often use quite a stiff brush to remove marks that you may not require.

Should disaster strike, you have had enough and decided that you want to give up on your picture, this is what you can do! Just don’t screw your paper up. Make sure that you have some acrylic paint to hand, take a brush and apply a wash so that it completely covers your work.

You now can achieve an admirable, tinted paper. The result being made by the acrylic and pastel coming together as long as you are using strong watercolour paper.

Something is to be said for oil pastels. If you make errors with these, you can adjust them fairly easily. No rubber is actually needed. All you need is some cotton wool and a supply of mineral spirits. I roll the cotton wool into a ball, dampen it with the spirit and simply wipe off the colour.

Believe me this works! You work is fine, as the spirits do not take long to evaporate. You might also like to copy an image. This is easy enough. If you have, say a soft pastel, maybe you like it and have done all you can to it, but you can’t get it right. What would I do?

Get a new piece of paper, wash it with water, then drain it . Now transfer this on top of your painting so it is static. Press your firm hand across it, or even it, it would also be possible to use a sponge if you were careful.

If you then carefully raise the paper off, you should have reversed and transferred your image on to the new sheet of paper. Really, it needs to be left to dry, so adhere it to a board so that the paper will not wrinkle. Now you can start all over again.