Tastes of Culture

To me, pastels are a very colourful way of painting. This medium is strong, yet it is also dry. So, because of the dryness of this powder type of surface, it always seems to catch the light well. Not only this, but the colouring achieved always can be so intense and vibrant, better in fact than any other medium.

One advantage with these is, that you do not have to wait for the paint to dry, because this is a dry medium. As for artists, this can be quite trying, having to be patient. This being so, you can go directly with your pastels and colour your surface straightaway.

Therefore it will be longer lasting than oil paint, simply because it has no varnish or oil contained in it to yellow and crack over the years.

Degas is a famous artist who actually embraced this method very successfully. He showed, in his work, how you could use these paints to advantage, capturing the movement of light and colours.You only need to look at his pictures of racehorses, figures and skies, to clarify this.

It is an interesting fact that pastels from the 18th Century are in such good condition today. Retaining their freshness and vibrant colours. If you want to frame them, the pastel must not touch the glass, so you need a passe partout mat to place it on.

There is a difference in how different paints are produced, but the pigment used in oil and watercolours is exactly the same as pastels. Oil paints are a consistency of oil and pigment. Gum and pigment makes up watercolours, but pastels have water, chalk and pigment mixed to a paste.

When pastels are manufactured, after the colour has been checked and sometimes more pigments added, the paste has to be pounded to remove the air in it. Then it can be shaped into long, round, strips which then can be cut into short lengths for pastels.

They are then dried and each one labelled and put in boxes, carefully, to avoid them getting damaged. I think that most companys also apply a binding agent to keep the powder together in these short sticks.

Obviously the amount of binding agent in the mix will ultimately affect the finished products strength and the mark that the pastel will make. At one time, it may not be so now, Rowney used to be one of the companies that did not include a binding agent when making pastels. This is probably why their pastels had a softness about them and very good durability.

The tints vary, as for instance, if you have a lot of chalk in the mix, the pigment will be pale, by the same token if there is not much chalk in the mix, the tint will be darker. So, the strength of pastel colours is produced by the chalk factor mixed with pastel. As you can see, there will be varying tints in the colour range.

Pastels too, are graded from light tints to dark shades. To appreciate pastels at their best, just look at the works of Degas and how inspirational his paintings were and still are to the present day.