A blast from my Past (chalk pastels - soft, hard, and pencils)

It's finally time for me to learn chalk pastels.   Sometimes called soft pastels, or hard pastels, or pastel pencils, it's supposedly a fast and fun medium. These all seem to have a chalk or clay base with pigment and binder.   I'm already in love with conte drawing sticks and charcoal.  Pastels seem like the natural next step.

How hard can it be?

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I saw a pencil the other day with a swan on it.  It brought back a flood of memories of one of my favourite pencil sets from my childhood.  After much digging and cursing through the basement, I found it.



Also, look at the price of those smudge sticks in the 1980s! Crazy considering these are $0.10 and $0.25 today.

I remember I stopped using them because I couldn't sharpen them easily.  I tried a few and yep, it's still breaks hard.  But these have been with me for many changes of house and adventures, so I guess it might be time to say goodby.

But I don't want to.

I'm going to see what kind of art I can do with these and use them up.  Then I can use the tin for something new.  It's a pretty box.



Speaking about price, I had hoped to buy a new set to relive some memories, but alas, these are nearly $75 CAD for the same size set on amazon.  That's way too much.   Any suggestions for pencils like this to play with more in my price range?  

I wish I knew this about pastels when I was a kid.  Her work is amazing.  I wonder if I can draw an eye like that with the pastels I have left.

I never had pastel pencils - those are cool!! Are they less messy to work with, than the chunks? Do they play the same way, on the paper/ canvas?

Carla Burke wrote:I never had pastel pencils - those are cool!! Are they less messy to work with, than the chunks? Do they play the same way, on the paper/ canvas?

I have exactly the same questions.  I can't remember from childhood what these were like, but they did get used a lot.

Excited to find out.

r ranson wrote:

Carla Burke wrote:I never had pastel pencils - those are cool!! Are they less messy to work with, than the chunks? Do they play the same way, on the paper/ canvas?

I have exactly the same questions.  I can't remember from childhood what these were like, but they did get used a lot.

Excited to find out.

I'll be watching to see what you discover. I didn't even know there was such a thing.

Thanks.
I don't know why I have a mix of fear and excitement to try these again.  Probably because they are so expencive to replace if I fall in love.  But it's not any use having them sit unused.

But what to draw?

And what paper.  Some tutorials suggest that it needs specific paper to work.

What to draw? Hmmm... Gamboling lambs? Flowers with beneficial insects? Dragonflies? Bees? Self portraits? Still lifes? Water lilies? Port scenes? Partially done weaving on the loom?

They (the internet people) suggest the best place to start learning pastels is the mungyo set.  Little mini half-sticks of soft chalk pastels are so cute and this brand is supposed to be medium soft.  It says 64 colours, but it's 62, plus extra black and white.  Plus a firmer, longer hard black and white pastel stick.  

It's a nice selection of colours and one of the more affordable sets.  But shop around as some of the budget sites were twice as expensive as other sites.  

Pastels do seem to be an expencive medium.


Questions in my mind today
. Are they really that quick a medium?
. Can I find some that are more like conte drawing sticks?
. Would pastels be good for outside sketching or en plein air?
. Is this an ecologically friendly medium?  And what choices can I choose to make it more so?

I've heard that a good way to get to know a new medium is to draw spheres.   That's boring, but this yuzu is an oblique spheroid.

These mungyo. half pastels make a lot of dust.  I couldn't get details so I finished off with my pastel pencils.  I was able to get some colours but it didn't combine like I expect with paint.  Feels muddy.  There must be a trick to it.

I also noticed the paper filled up and wouldn't take more colour after a while.

It was nice that the powder smudges together and removes any drawing lines.  

I find I am more confident with this shape drawing tool than a pencil. I don't feel obligated to think in lines.  

But I don't like it as much as conte drawing sticks which have less dust.

Wow!

Can pastels really do this?  I'm more used to courtroom sketches.  And it's  her second piece.

Observation.  Within each layer, she places the colours next to eachtoher rather than overlapping. I wonder if that's why her colours are so clear.

So nice you bring this medium into attention!

I enjoyed drawing/painting with pastels A LOT in my early years. And it's true, you can only apply so much pastel to the page before it clogs up. But if it clogs up, you can still mix the pastels with that paper smudger, or take some off with a putty eraser.

The colours are really vibrant when you apply it in one layer only on paper. The background colour (colour of paper) also effects the end result.

Personally, I found Comte crayons very nice to sketch with, and pastels to 'paint'-draw with.

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to mix colour, even blending doesn't seem to mix well.  Too opaque for glazing..  Maybe optical mixing is the key?

It's frustrating that the darkest colour is about middle on the value scale...except for black.  Trying to mix that into the colour doesn't darken, so much as make things dirty.  Black makes the colour lose the glow.

I'm trying to remember what I learnt at art school, and to keep the vibrancy of pastel colours, you indeed need to 'mix' them optically, as you mentioned. Lots of fine strokes of one colour, and then more fine strokes of another colour, in the same direction, between the first ones.

The colour of your paper is a part of the colour palette of the 'painting' as well, as it shines through between the strokes.

It's a tricky medium, but a fascinating one. Be gentle with yourself and enjoy the exploration!
Good luck!

I don't know if these are pastels.



They say pastels on the box, soft pastels on the listing, and hard pastels on the actual sticks.

They feel almost waxy, like a crumbling pencil crayon lead got compressed into stick form.  Like if conte crayons had wax, this would be them.  I kind of like them as they don't make much dust, don't hurt my skin, and the colour palette is versatile.   Very hard to blend and even more sensitive to paper type than the other soft pastels I tried so far.

My old pastel pencils ca draw on top even when these sticks say the paper is "full."

Those are hard pastels. And a beautiful drawing/painting!

r ransom wrote:

Wow!

Can pastels really do this?  I'm more used to courtroom sketches.  And it's  her second piece.

Observation.  Within each layer, she places the colours next to eachtoher rather than overlapping. I wonder if that's why her colours are so clear.

Gorgeous! And yup - they can do this, and side by side makes a LOT of sense, to allow blending/ shading, but avoid muddiness - I never thought to try that...

I haven't done much with pastels so far.  

They intrigue me, but being a less affordable medium with some very expencive paper needs, I find excuses not to experiment.

Although a deeper truth: the most expencive items are those we bought and never enjoyed.  

The other day, a parcel came wrapped in some dark, stiff paper.  For some reason, I instantly felt this would be ideal for drawing charcoal, pastels, or maybe oil pastels.  I've hit a delay starting my next painting, so maybe I can experiment.  Maybe.

The paper has two sides, a pinkish and a greyish side.  The grey side (top in photo) doesn't seem to hold on to the dust well, but is good for blending.   The pink side seems to allow more layers and chrisp lines.  


Would this work?
My idea is to use softer pastels to smudge a background layer, then firmer pastels for details, then pastel pencils for most details and defining edges.

Also, how do soft pastels hold up to nocturnes?  Are they too pale to do a convincing nighttime scene?

r ransom wrote:
The other day, a parcel came wrapped in some dark, stiff paper.  For some reason, I instantly felt this would be ideal for drawing charcoal, pastels, or maybe oil pastels.  
...
Would this work?
My idea is to use softer pastels to smudge a background layer, then firmer pastels for details, then pastel pencils for most details and defining edges.

Sounds good to me!
Just keep in mind, at some point the paper is saturated, and can't take any more pastel.
Also, when your work is finished, fix it. Art shops sell fixing spray, but a good hairspray does the same thing!
Good luck, enjoy experimenting!

r ransom wrote:Also, how do soft pastels hold up to nocturnes?  Are they too pale to do a convincing nighttime scene?

Use dark coloured paper!

I thought I had lots of lovely colours.

I can paint a painting with 3 or 4 paints, and yet, out of 64 pastels in one set, only 4 of them are grey.  That's 4 values from about three to seven on a value scale of 10.  That would be possible, except they are all very brown-leaning grey.  Very warm.  

Most of the set are warm colours, even the blues lean towards purple.  

The source photo I'm painting from, lives off the play between warm and cool (mostly cool) greys and little pops of colour.

So, i think maybe I can blend colour with the grays, but I'm not doing well as it brings up the saturation in the greys.

I'm feeling lost.  I all these colourful pastels, probably more colours here than I have paint, and yet, I can't find out how to get close to the right colour on the paper.

I feel like I'm missing some vital clue how to make these work.

I believe, if you draw lines with your warm gray and a light blue, at a distance it will appear as a cooler gray.
Lots of parallel lines, not blending on paper with a tool, but optically, as one looks at it from a distance.
Good luck!

Exciting thrift store find!  Most are barely used, except poor yellow ochre. The cheapest i found somfar for replacement sticks in this brand are at least $9 each plus shipping and tax.  The rate i am going through it, I will probably run out of white today, or nearly.  

So the compleat-ist in me wants to order the pastel and compleat the set, and then get an extra ochre and well, one can always do with red ochre and... but I'm still unconvinced this medium is the right match for me.  And maybe I could figure out if one can make a pastel at home as I have yellow ochre pigments.

For now, I borrowed the colour from the mungyo set.

The Rembrandt are less scratchy and produce almost no dust compared to the Mungyo.  But the difference isn't huge.   The Rembrandt sticks seem bigger so they appear to last longer.   It's funny, with the mungyo set, I felt intimidated as there are so many colours and never the right one.  The smaller set feels more comfortable and the colours go together better.  Harmony or something.

I thought it might be fun to try the goldfinch.  It's not as simple as I expected.

In some ways, I don't want to share this as it's well into the ugly stage and I'm not sure if I can find a path to get the results I seek.

But also, I  worry about the trend to not show work in progress as it helps us feel there should never be an ugly stage, and that's just not true.



Maybe I should switch to pencils soon?

Any suggestions how to keep going without risking mud?



But now the sun came out and it's very pleasing how the light reflects inside the painting... which probably isn't the right words.   Other pastels didn't let the light in and just coated the page.   Is it because I started with a pale background or different ingredients in the brand of pastels?

A very interesting expierence.  These don't risk replacing oils and watercolour as my everyday mediums, but I can see the advantage more now.  I learned a lot about colour and a lot about this picture specifically.

These Rembrandt soft pastels are the first i don't mind getting on my skin.  All the others tend to make my skin feel closed and icky.  Like a mild allergy symptoms I would get with school chalk.

I didn't use up the white in the end, but probably because I switched to mungyo white half way through to save money.





I made a picture, now what do I do with it?

There is about 1/4 teaspoon of pastels dust on my easel ledge.   It's mostly white and yellow ochre from the mungyo sticks, but enough random colour to make it a muddy white.  

Is it worth saving the dust?

I probably would. It could be used with your fingers,a brush, or a smudge stick - or maybe even use it to make more.

What did people use as a pastel fixative in the 1700 and 1800s?

I tried to use some blue tack to put my bird on the wall and it was dusty.

A modern take on fixative with heritage ingredients

https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/topic/home-made-fixative-based-on-size-hide-glue/

I took some inspiration from Ralph Mayer’s handbook and other sources, and came up with my own fixative. I had no casein medium but I thought that hide glue is very similar chemically. I have used it for two days now together with some new pastels that just arrived, and oh boy does it “fix”. I have been rubbing some samples with my finger, and layer more pastel on top. A heavy spray of this fixative will make the painting more transparent and slightly darker (like most fixatives). If you’re interested I can keep you updated on how it does on various layered paintings.

recipe:
2g (1g) Fredrix hide glue granules (or rabbit skin glue)

100 ml water

100 ml pure 40% alcohol (Vodka works)



I soaked and warmed up the granules in water until they melted (gently steaming) then mixed in the alcohol. This makes a very weak glue solution that hasn’t gelled (so far at least). Finally I put the mixture in a clean plastic perfume bottle with a atomizer nozzle. Spray on carefully.

Later in the thread, it's mentioned to reduce the glue from 2 to 1g