Following my tutor making the suggestion that I look at Paula Rego’s work, I started using soft pastels. I haven’t used pastels in any real way beyond conte during life drawing sessions. Years ago, I took a dry media introduction course and picked up some student grade pastels. They were horrid and messy and didn’t pick up soft pastels again until these exercises.
In the last couple weeks, I’ve been working with soft pastels and getting somewhat comfortable with them. Related log entries so far
These have been extremely fun, even when frustrating. And it has encouraged me to learn more about pastels, and their make-up. I’m going to record my learning here.
What is a Pastel?
Pastels are a pigment powders, bound with various fillers, binding agents, and brighteners. They can use oil as a binder, or a glue. If they use oil they are referred to as Oil Pastels, while glue-bound pastels are known as Hard or Soft pastels. In my case, I’m using Soft Pastels, so I’ll constrain my comments to them.
The pigments appear to be the same pigments used in paints. According to the Sennelier pigments brochure* some pigments aren’t necessarily well suited to all binders. If I look through the brochure, it mentions that the metallic pigments have special considerations for water-based binders. Since soft pastels use a water-based binder, I’m going to assume these pigments aren’t good for pigments. In the brochure it suggests these pigments need varnishing, so I think they likely oxidize.
Soft Pastels are remarkably simple in their make up: pigment, some fillers, and traditionally Gum Tragacanth† which is derived from a plant. Some recipes suggest preservatives are needed‡.
I suppose pastels aren’t that much different from chalks, though of course chalks use chalk, and pastels don’t generally. I’m going to assume that this isn’t a rigid rule.
A (very) Brief History
Apparently pastels came into use around the 16th century§, and had very limited colour range (black, white, red) which suggests to me that these were very much like what I know as conte today — since those are essentially the colours of conte. Pastels were briefly very popular in the 1700s, though they fell out of fashion early in the 1800s(The History of Pastels, 2014).
In the latter decades of the 1800s, Edgar Degas began using pastels, followed by many others we consider masters today(The History of Pastels, 2014).
Conservation
Pastels don’t dry — whether oil-based, or hard/soft pastels. As such they can be extremely fragile pieces of work. Apparently, soft pastels aren’t subject to as much colour shift as either Oil or Watercolours over time (The History of Pastels, 2014). I imagine soft pastels need to be protected, as any accumulated dust or grime would be exceptionally difficult to remove without destroying the image. This is in contrast to an oil painting where a conservator can remove a the varnish layer and its associates dirt, and restore the colours of the painting.
- *Pure Pigments & other artists materials (s.d.) (s.l.): Sennelier. At: http://www.sennelier-colors.com/article/photo/dossier200/Pigment_colour_chart.pdf
- †How to Make Pastels by Hand (2020) At: https://kurtwenner.com/how-to-make-pastels-by-hand/ (Accessed 11/08/2021).
- ‡How to Make Pastels by Hand (2020) At: https://kurtwenner.com/how-to-make-pastels-by-hand/ (Accessed 11/08/2021).
- §The History of Pastels (2014) At: https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/learning/resources/history-pastels (Accessed 11/08/2021).