Today, I’d like to share with you a little bit from my own pastel journey and what helped me to master it. Maybe some of it will resonate with you or encourage you to get to the easel more often :)
I wish I could say, like some other artists, that I fell in love with pastels the moment I took into my hands! But that was not the case. In college, I was working mostly with oils. Pastels and Watercolor were the last two classes I took to complete the Studio Arts major requirements for the graduation. That’s when I got my first set of soft pastels. It was a half-stick set by Sennelier. I believe, it had 40 or 60 colors, not sure. They looked and felt luxurious! But the problem was, I absolutely did not know how to get the rest of the colors I needed in my paintings. I seemed very limiting. The pastel class instructor was not very helpful - we were not even introduced to more abrasive surface - sanded paper. And you might be able to relate to the feeling of frustration when using non-sanded paper, particularly when you don’t really know much about mixing colors yet ;) Nevertheless, I got my “A” in that class and graduated from college. My box of pastels was sitting all that time somewhere in the deep corner of the art shelf…. Until one day, I wanted to quickly capture the colors of the sunset outside my window.
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