One of the oldest materials used for creativity is pastel. She wrote her magnificent works of Renoir, Leonardo da Vinci, Degas and other artists. The pastel can be used both as an independent means of depiction, and as an auxiliary material in other techniques, including polymer clay molding, as well as decoupage. The pastel stands out with its bright, vibrant colors and velvety texture.
A pastel is made from a coloring pigment and a binder, which may be wax, gum arabic or mineral oils. In stores you can buy pastels in the form of pencils without a rim or colored crayons. There are three types of pastels: watercolor, oil and dry. Let's take a closer look at oil pastels and how to use them in drawing.
Oil pastels are very similar to wax crayons with sufficient softness. In addition, the colors are very saturated. Pastel crayons are made in the form of small sticks with a square or round cross section. They differ from waxes in the presence of a greater number of pigments, high elasticity and elasticity. It should be noted that the oil pastel practically does not get dirty, and after applying it to the surface of the sheet, additional fixing in the form of varnish is not required.
Any surface is suitable for painting with oil pastels. The advantages of this tool include the ability to erode it. To do this, the artist needs to have a special solvent for oil paints and shading - a stick of pressed paper. It is dipped in a solvent and washed to obtain the desired shade. Solvent drawing should be done in a room that is well ventilated.
The texture of oil pastels allows you to create effects that cannot be performed in other painting techniques. For decorative paintings, oil pastels are often used, the application technique of which allows us to convey rich and deep tones of the depicted object. Artistic drawings made by this method are preferably stored in and under glass, and there must be a gap between the glass and the picture. This is necessary to save the image, since drawings made by pastel are very susceptible to minor damage, shedding, and are also easily erased.
Oil pastels require a rough base, because it does not hold well on the surface. Such a technique requires special paper, for example, emery, loose fleecy cardboard, suede, canvas, parchment or torshon paper. The advantages of the material under consideration include the ability to remove and overlap several layers at once.
Oil pastels are represented by a huge number of shades, of which there are more than one and a half thousand. This diversity allows you to implement any creative ideas in various genres. The pastel technique has come a long way from a simple three-color drawing to a full-fledged painting, which became especially popular during the Baroque period, and now the impressionists prefer to use it.