Painting with pastels

If you are new to paint with pastels, congratulations on choosing one of the easiest and most fun artistic media in existence. You'll find that pastels Combine the speed and convenience of drawing (no chemicals or liquids required), with the beautiful colors in the painting. So what is the art of using them effectively? Here is some general advice that will help you to get the most out of painting with pastels.

1. Start with a little planning 

1. Planning? I thought, pastels, all about diving in! Yes, there is a contradiction here. You can just dive into a new pastel graphics without doing some planning in advance. This is a fun way to work, and it can give good results. But sometimes you will destroy a work of art because it is so easy to just keep adding pigment. A little planning will help you to avoid this, so before you begin, do a little thumbnail sketch of your idea and get your mix right first. 
   
   
2. Shadows are more complicated than you think 
   Ask a non-artist, what color are the shadows and you will avoid hearing "black, of course." But in reality, black shadows are almost never clean, and makes the shadows in your work in pure black, will look very unnatural. More attention to the shadows around you, and you will see that they all have a little brown in them, or a little blue in them, or a little green in them. Color your shadows the same and the difference will speak for itself. 
   
   
3.  Be aware of your tone area 
   Contrast is so important. A number of values from light to dark in your works will give them "punch" that will help to capture and hold the attention of the viewer. It is not necessary to include a pure white and pure black and everything between, but 95% of the time you will have a healthy set of values. To check whether you have done this, photograph your artwork and convert it to grayscale on your computer. Want to see a variety of values of gray ... or just a couple? If there are just a few, add some brighter highlights and darker in the dark. 
   
   
4. Take breaks will help you assess your own work 
   Every artist gets caught in their work and lose the ability to be objective. To combat this, get up and walk away from your artwork on a regular basis. Looking at it again after a short break, and from a different angle will immediately help you to see what makes it or whether it is time to stop (always try to avoid overloading your artwork). 
   
   
5. Practicing drawing will improve your pastels immensely 
   Pastels are a very quick and portable media, but it does not mean that you will take them anywhere. However, implies a Sketchpad and an ordinary graphite pencil is affordable for everyone and allows you to practice drawing, when you have an extra minute. This will pay big dividends for your pastels. 
   
   
6.  How to paint with Oil Pastels 
   Ordinary soft pastels already shares some of the properties of paint, but oil pastels are even more like a painting medium. If you love the look of paint but dislike the idea of brushes, palettes, and messy cleanups, so this type of pastel is an excellent alternative. 
   
   
7. As oil pastels are best for 
   The fact that this type of pastels are so soft, makes them very bold, impasto work (this is where pigments are obviously built up on paper). Indeed, these pastels spread and scraped with a spatula, if they are first put down on paper in sufficient quantities. 
   
   
8. In contrast to soft pastels, oil pastels as you do not have a crumbly, dusty texture, which means that the finished works of art should not be treated as gently as a soft pastel them - they will not throw dust every time they bump. They are prone to smudging, but it can be solved by spraying them with a layer of fixative. In contrast to the soft pastel, fixative will not dull them (in fact it may give them a nice shiny gloss) so you can go ahead and use it without worrying about destroying your work. 
   
   
9. Another good thing is that they are effective in a variety of surfaces. They do not have as many teeth as soft pastels, so they will work even on slippery surfaces. This is a great advantage if you want to experiment with surfaces that are atypical, such as wood, glass or canvas. 
   
   
10. As oil pastels are not as good 
    Softness of oil pastels, which makes them less good at fine detail. One approach to this problem is simply to adopt a painting style that does not require to do fine detail. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, it is a stylistic choice. 
    If you want to make art with very fine detail, but does not want to switch to a medium better suited to them, so that one method is to download some pigment on the end of a blending tool or the edge of an eraser, and use it with that, rather than by holding the stick directly. 
    
    
11. In contrast to soft pastels, oil pastels - especially dark shades - a tiny speck of paper, which means that they are difficult or impossible to remove from the paper if you want to do this. To circumvent this block in any area of your paper you want to keep the lights with a white pastel first. Then you can use darker values, and if you make a mistake, you will be able to scrape back into the white layer and start over. 
    
    
12. Oil pastels are less prone to smudging, which is both good and bad - bad because they are harder to mix, and because it takes longer to fill an area with color than with soft pastel colors. This is a minor problem with small surfaces, so consider limiting the size of your works, if you want to work the pretty pastel colors.