Saturday, October 20, 2012

Pastel Basics I

It was an interesting weekend at KAGS with various pastel artists doing demonstrations for those of us wanting to learn the basics of pastel painting.

I have samples of seven ways of putting pastel down on the paper. The first was called "scumble", it is layering one colour on top of the other and letting the pastel mix on the paper.

Scumble

The second method that was shown is called "dry wash", it is put down in a similar way as scumble but then it is blended with either a stump or fingers. This gives a softer look to the image.

Stumps are usually preferred over fingers which will leave oil from the skin on the drawing surface.

Dry Wash

The third method shown was called "stroking".  This consists of long and short lines, which may be straight or curves to help show the direction of movement or the shape of an object.

An example would be straight lines in flat objects and curved lines on round objects.


Stroking

The fourth method is called "stroking and blending". This can be done in two ways; the first by putting down  an area of "dry wash" (see above) and putting stroking over top or by putting down all stroking lines and blending some of them to soften an area. 

This would be ideal for fur, feathers or wood grain.

Stroking and Blending

I will post the other three ways of applying pastel at a later date.