The Ultimate Guide For Pastel Painting

Pastel painting is not just about creating a fun and relaxing medium but also about effects that they can provide in the surface of your painting board or paper, the texture of holding the sticks straight for your preferred drawing board is magical as you can control and manipulate them all at the same time, with these special properties, we’ve specially crafted the ultimate guide for pastel painting just for you. Read along to learn more about the pastel paints unique characteristics.

But aside from fun and variety of colors to choose from, with an endless possibility of mixing and blending the pastel paints all together, you still think of how will they look like when all dried and done with the pastel painting session. What is the best style and technique to pastel paints to maximize their beauty? If you will be using underpainting, will they show off and be noticeable? And the questions go on, however, we have the answers for you too! Read along for amazing tips for pastel paintings and learn more along the way.

The Ultimate Guide for Pastel Painting

Painting Surface Matters

This is a thing pastel painters must always remember as they will be working with their painting surface more than anything else. Choosing the right color to use is a great advantage to pastel painting as it gives the best result to your finished art piece. Thanks to the ultimate guide for pastel painting, now you will be more specific the next time you will buy your materials for pastel painting, experimentation is the key.

Starter Set

Always get the starter set if you are new to pastel painting, and level up for adding more colors as you gain more knowledge of the paints or sticks along the way. You will be needing a few colors for experimenting till you can decide to make all your materials as artist grade afterward.

Maximize The Stick

Make the best of your pastel painting by using every bits and side of your pastel stick, learn to use all their sides as you can use them any way they are, that is one of the advantages of pastel painting, you can maximize all the pigments in them, with the ultimate guide for pastel painting, you surely will use all of the pastels in your next session, even the dust, they work wonders too!

Store Properly

Just like anything that you use and makes your life worth the time spent, always keep those pastel sticks in a safe and dry place for they easily get broken due to their compositions and soft characteristics. They are usually in a box that keeps them safe, if you happen to lose their box, just store them on a good container for them to not get broken is already good maintenance to start with.

Vertical Is Best

With the ultimate guide for pastel painting, you will learn how to avoid the fumes, dust or particles from getting all over the place as you work with this medium, painting and using them vertically will let all the dust drop straight down on the edge of your drawing board or the easel stand. So always remember, vertical is best for pastel painting.

Don’t Blow

It is not advisable to just blow off the dust anywhere, you do not want to inhale any dust particles while you are creating your masterpiece.

Blend And Layer

The best way to achieve an interesting layer of texture to pastel painting is by layering and blending colors together, the more they are layered properly provides an amazing after result texture. Another key feature that makes the best layer is the surface color itself, so always choose a good color of the drawing surface as mentioned in the first list of the ultimate guide for pastel painting.

Light Color

If you will be using light colors and application, this will provide you an interesting series of layers, texture, and depth as your pastel painting reaches it curing time.

Frame Finished Paintings

To prevent pastel painting from getting smudge all over the place, it is better to frame the painting with enough space between the glass and the surface of the drawing paper or board of the art piece.

Tips For Improving Your Pastel Painting Skills

Though you are just a beginner to pastel paints, the ultimate guide for pastel painting will help you a lot to understand this medium. The artist and painters of this medium usually advise you to get a starter set, a student grade quality, however, it is also good to start with artist grade paints to see the difference from both materials. A high-quality material results in a high-quality masterpiece.

Practicing with your pastel paintings allows you room for improvements too, get used to bring with you a set of pastel sticks and a drawing pad, be it a sketchpad, or anything you can start with when inspiration suddenly strikes you away.

Free Your Visuals

Whenever you are working with pastels, try working with a good visual of your artwork, stand next to it if possible and imagine it while you work, free your imagination and inspiration every time. Squint to see the overall details of your chosen subject in your painting. Let all the main details and highlights be the last touch for your painting to avoid smudge all over the place.

How To Properly Apply Pastel Paints

Apply pastel paints as much as possible in one direction, let all the strokes be off one way until the edge for a uniform style and strokes, this will help you to blend them properly which result to a smoother texture on the surface of your painting. If you will be doing a stroke down, leave it there and try not to go back on the same spot.

It is better to quickly work on pastel paints than try and thinking over the sketch and marks if you can create a sample of your final painting is better, the draft will save you from any confusion as you start painting, plans and paint.

How To Gain More Knowledge On Pastel Painting

There are different options and possibilities in acquiring additional skills in pastel painting, that includes obtaining more information by reading the ultimate guide for pastel painting, experimenting of different styles and doing different techniques, even strokes of different kinds will help you gain more skills too. You can maximize the use of different resources like researching ideas for pastel painting, watch documentaries and as you watch, practice what them as well. Read more books about pastel painting and all that is about it, follow your favorite painter or artist with the same medium and try to copy what they are doing, even do a new version of their technique is better.

Experiment With Pastel Paints

Pastel paints come from different kinds and composition, you can experiment by purchasing two kids of pastel sticks such as the softer pastels and a harder stick, let yourself learn the beauty of combining these two kinds in your painting to discover a different style with pastel painting.

Erase At Times

Different from another medium, pastel paints have this advantage of getting erase especially if they are applied to special paper or card, though if the surface is too toothy, possibilities of pigments staying in between the fills can be a challenge too. White plastic eraser can be used to erase pastel paints, however, that still depends on the texture of your paper, since white plastic eraser easily becomes dirty with continuous used, cleaning them is possible by scrubbing them properly until their color comes back again.

Don’t Overwork

You will not notice this as you want your painting to look better and adding a few more details to the already planned image may lead to overworking of your masterpiece.

Real Image For Inspiration

You can use your old photos for inspiration as you make a quick scan to them, without putting all the details of the image, this will enhance your inspiration to create fantastic and realistic paintings with pastel paints too.

Pastel painting is not just about blending and applying pigments to the drawing surface to fill the tooth of the surface that influences the texture of a painting. It is also an expression and freedom in a balance and unique way while using pastel paints for such medium to showcase not just your skill but to develop inspiring confidence through strokes of every stick of different pastel paint colors.

Interested in other media like watercolor painting? Click here to know more about their unique characteristics as well.