Invent And Create With Dry Pastels For Creating Your Masterpiece

By Author: Terry Metcalfe
Total Articles: 53
Comment this article

Dry pastel art is one of the more popular styles of artwork creating a fantastic abstract all formed through using dry pastel sticks. However there are some favourable tips for ensuring that your paintings keep bright and sharp and to their fullest appeal.

When you start creating your masterpiece and apply the colours always ensure that you paint with the support placed in to a vertical position. If you prefer you can also lay it flat on a surface, apart from when you start rubbing the colour from the pastel stick, at this point ensure you support it back in a vertical position. This will then allow the crumbs and pastel dust to fall harmlessly to the floor rather than all over your painting. If you do not follow this procedure you will find that the excess dust will dis-colour your painting and ruin all your hard work.

Using pastels to create a painting is different to any other medium and should always be constructed in layers. Planning the construction is important and should start with using your hard pastels at the base or back of the painting, then painting forward from this point and then finally ending ...
... with your softest pastels. If you prefer to use tinted paper or work over a dried water colour painting always sketch out the basic plan using your hard pastels. Before moving past this under-painting stage, it's a good idea to fasten it to the paper with spray fixative. Your following soft pastels can then attach onto renewed a refreshed "tooth" of the paper. After completing the painting in your soft pastels, the remaining steps should be another session of spray fixing, this time of that soft pastel layer, and then, the very last step prior to framing, a judicious soft pastel touch-up making the light highlights more brilliant, areas of strong colours more clear and vivid, and other desired pastel restatements.

The final stage concerns the use of the controversial fixative. Never finish your pastel painting with fixative. Applying a final fixing will only serve one purpose and that would be to dull your colours. Most artists will agree that the "fixative" is a misnomer and offers a false promise. The pastel last transferred to the paper is never very strongly attached, whether fixed or not. So, you still always have to avoid shaking or jarring the painting, etc. even after framing. The bare painting must never be rubbed against anything. (During the framing, the mat must never slip sideways against the pastel or a bald strip may form.)

The Fixative is best served during the painting process, before the painting is finished. If the painting in progress seems to have lost its tooth, if it refuses to easily accept more pastel, then the tooth can be restored via a fixative spay. Ensure though that when using the aerosol fixative spray not to be too vigorous or you can end up blowing loose pastel crumbs off the painting before actually fastening the surface. Yes certain colours will become dull, so it is wise to simply go over the colours again with your soft pastels. Then you can finally frame your masterpiece for all to enjoy.

Terry Metcalfe writes on behalf of Crafty Arts specialists in providing a selection of quality art supplies and bespoke art materials for all aspiring artists.