Create lifelike drawings using artist's pastels.
Pastels are a medium used for drawing and coloring art and design pieces. Pastels come in various types, each with different characteristics, depending on the amount of binder that is added to the pigments. The advantage of using pastels is that they require minimal tools other than the pastels themselves and, if used correctly, create vibrant colors and rich textures on a piece of artwork.
Hard Pastels
Hard pastels are sold as rectangular sticks, and have the chalkiest quality of all pastels. Hard pastels blend well for shading techniques, and their hard quality makes them a good choice for creating more detailed work. The higher amount of binder added to hard pastels makes them chalkier in nature, however they produce less vibrant color than soft pastels. Use hard pastels for sketching and coloring drawings, and spray a fixative sealer to the finished piece to prevent smearing.
Soft Pastels
Soft pastels come in rounded sticks that resemble the appearance of the traditional crayon. Soft pastels have a supple quality to them, making them an ideal choice for coloring and blending, and for shading techniques, over large areas of drawings. Soft pastels have less binder than hard pastels and more pigment, so they produce much more vibrant colors than hard pastels. Due to their soft nature, they smudge on paper easily and have a tendency to break into small pieces.
Oil Pastels
The binder in oil pastels is made of wax, then rolled into a rounded stick. You can use oil pastels for drawing and coloring artwork. You can make pastels function like oil paint by adding turpentine to your brush and painting over the pastels on paper. The turpentine dilutes the oil-soluble pastels, and allow the colors to flow like oil paints. You can purchase oil pastels in a rounded crayon or stick form. One disadvantage to oil pastels is that they are non-drying, however you can add a specialty fixative over a finished piece to create a dry surface for framing.
Pastel Pencils
Pastel pencils are pigments rolled into a wood casing, like traditional colored pencils. Pastel pencils are softer than traditional colored pencils, allowing more freedom in shading and blending techniques. You can sharpen pastel pencils to create fine details for drawing and sketching. Use pastel pencils in combination with other types of pastels to create fine lines and blending techniques, such as stippling and cross-hatching, that you cannot achieve with softer crayons and sticks.
