Pastel crayons for drawing: how to choose and how to use. What is art pastel

Often, when a beginning artist needs to decide what material to work with, he tends to choose between oil and watercolor. But there is another category of art materials called “soft”. These include a simple and pleasant material to work with – pastel.

Drawing with pastel crayons involves close contact of the fingers with the paper, as strokes are often shaded to achieve the desired shade or texture. Thanks to this, you can literally “feel” the drawing while working. In addition, the technique of drawing with pastels has a magical property - it tends to transform the simplicity and even “primitiveness” of a drawing from a disadvantage into an advantage.

From classics to impressionism

The history of pastel began in the 15th century. Mentions of this material can be found in the theoretical works of Leonardo da Vinci. The French word “pastel” itself began to be used much later - in the middle of the 17th century. It comes from the Latin pastellum - paste. From pure dark pigment, by grinding it with chalk, more light colors– hence the well-known word “pastel”.

This material was used by many artists of the Renaissance, as well as outstanding representatives of modern art: Ingres, Jean Etienne Lyotard, John Russell, Maurice de La Tour. The use of pastels in the classical portrait genre, both in its pure form and in combination with gouache, was especially popular.

The technique was later used by James Whistler for his famous atmospheric landscapes. Also, this material was popular among artists representing the main directions of painting of the 19th and early 20th centuries - the Impressionists and the artists of the Nabis group (Les Nabis). Pierre Bonnard, Jean Edouard Vuillard, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and many others painted with pastels.

Surprisingly, the pastels that Degas used can still be bought today - the small shop “La Maison du Pastel” in one of the alleys of Paris has hardly changed since the 1920s. Production using the technology invented by Henri Rochat is carried out by his heirs.

The family workshop still uses antique tools and makes pastels by hand. The full range of colors is 567 shades, and the price for one chalk reaches 12-18 euros. It was this type of pastel that Degas’s famous series of ballerinas and some of Sisley’s works were painted with.

Types of pastels for drawing

Pastel crayons come in three types:

• dry - the most convenient for beginners, it is easy to shade and can be erased with an eraser, colors can be overlapped;
• oil painting - requires certain skills, since it is difficult to correct what is drawn;
• waxy - does not shade, and although it lays down with a beautiful glossy layer, it is not easy to work with; it is often used in the technique of scratching on wax paper for a backing pattern;

It is not customary to combine several types of pastels in one drawing. Beginning artists are better off sticking with the first option.

Pastel, being a delicate and fragile material, requires careful handling, both with the crayons themselves and with the finished work. Drawing with dry pastels is good for both quick sketches or sketches, as well as long productions - returning to the work again and again, if desired, it can be brought to a photographic resemblance (if we are talking about drawing from life). Therefore, this material is equally good for both lovers of expression and supporters of painstaking drawing.

You can safely take pastels with you on a trip or for a walk - they are great for plein air (painting in nature). Capturing the play of light, conveying the texture of clouds or the rhythm of waves - this is not at all difficult to do.

Perhaps the only disadvantage of this material is the need to comply with certain storage conditions for pastel works (this does not apply to wax pastels). Namely:

• the work must be opened with a fixative, otherwise it will crumble over time;
• if you want to hang a pastel drawing in the interior, it should be placed under glass or plastic, and best of all, where it will not be exposed to sunlight;
• To store your works, you need to create a folder in which each drawing will be covered with a sheet of tracing paper, or you can initially use a special album for pastels.

What you need to paint with pastels

Tablet or easel

When drawing with pastels, it is convenient to place a sheet of paper vertically or at an angle. This will make it much easier to evaluate big picture, and it’s also easier to transfer lines from nature (still life or portrait) onto paper. Therefore, it is most convenient to get an easel or tablet that you can lean on a table or the back of a chair.

Pastel crayons

High-quality pastels cannot be called a cheap material, but with rational use, one set will last for a long time. In addition, novice artists should not chase the number of colors - 12-15 will be enough. When choosing a material in a store, you can usually try it out - a good pastel should lay on the paper with a velvety layer, without leaving small crumbs on the surface of the paper, and should be shaded well.

Drawing paper

In addition to pastel crayons, you will need tinted corrugated paper - it will allow you to make the most of the capabilities of the crayons. You can also purchase ready-made albums for pastels - they usually contain paper of 4-5 colors (usually dim light brown, gray, terracotta colors), and after each sheet of paper there is a sheet of tracing paper. When drawing, it is permissible to leave fragments unfilled with color - you can “play” on this by choosing paper of the same color as one of the objects being depicted. Using this technique, you will create the effect of professional mastery of the material.

Brushes and sponges

If desired, you can use flat brushes or pieces of sponge for shading, but at the initial stage it is preferable to use your finger - this way you can “feel” the material and understand how to achieve the desired effect.

Retainer

Pastel drawings must be opened with a special varnish from a spray bottle.
But you can also use hairspray. When opening the work, you need to hold the sprayer at a distance of 30-40 cm from the surface.

Features of the technology

Although pastel drawing is more often classified as graphics, this medium can also be used in a purely painterly manner.

The main thing you need to learn before you start drawing with pastels is to see colors. When drawing from life, you need to catch the reflexes that throw some objects onto others, peer into the shadows and find in them different shades, rather than “painting over” one color from one edge to the other.

It is also important to pay attention to the direction of the strokes - they should fit according to the shape, and not arbitrarily. This way, the objects will look voluminous. Large stains of color are best covered by holding the crayon flat.

You need to work on the drawing evenly - you shouldn’t take on just one thing. First you need to lightly cover everything bright places, then the darkest, most active accents and highlights should be placed at the very end. In the process of drawing from life, you need to constantly compare the tone of objects: the subject white doesn't have to be the lightest.

When drawing with pastels, as, indeed, with any other material, you need to remember about aerial perspective - the boundaries of distant objects should be softer than the outlines of nearby ones; what is in the distance (in the landscape) should be colder in tone than what is in the foreground.

You can achieve the desired shade in a pastel drawing either by alternating multi-colored strokes (optical mixing) or by overlapping one color with another (mechanical mixing). You can adjust the sharpness of contours or color saturation using shading. If there is a need to draw very small details, you can use pastel pencils in addition to crayons.

Drawing with oil pastels allows you to achieve special bright colors. This material is very soft, a little “greasy” and has good hiding power. They are a pleasure to work with, but you can get carried away with the colors and forget about volume and shape. Therefore, it is better to turn to oil pastels after you have mastered the basics of dry drawing.

Pastel is a very “grateful” material - shortcomings in craftsmanship are advantageously hidden by a spectacular look finished drawing. It will also not be difficult for a novice artist to find his own special style of drawing. Pastel works, even the simplest ones, look good in the interior.

If you are passionate, then be sure to get acquainted with other techniques:,. All of them can not only please, but also bring in sales of finished works, becoming a good help for the family budget.

Drawing has long ceased to be exclusively an art form - today it is an everyday hobby for tens of millions of people on the planet, as well as an excellent way creative development children. Absolutely every child in the world has tried to draw in one way or another, but those who got carried away and managed to find the means to give their hobby consistency and at least a slightly more complex form than drawing in the sand, managed to come up with many in various ways convey visual images.

Nowadays, children, at least in developed countries, usually draw with either pencils and felt-tip pens, or various types liquid paints - gouache, watercolor and so on. At the same time everything more specialists on questions child development indicate that one of the most suitable materials for children's fine arts could become art pastel.

What is it?

In fact, quite a few great artists of the past used this particular type of dye when creating their paintings, so the name is familiar to many, but not every person has a clear idea of ​​what it is, unless he himself is directly involved to drawing. Moreover, the adjective “pastel”, meaning a very delicate, soft shade of some color, comes precisely from the word “pastel”, since this drawing medium gives exactly such a result.

Actually, pastel looks somewhat similar to ordinary drawing chalk, and an inexperienced person cannot always tell the difference between them by appearance.

Unlike crayons, which always have approximately the same consistency, pastels can be both very hard and quite soft, which is used in various techniques drawing to achieve a special effect.

This invention appeared around the 16th century. more precisely, it was from this moment that we see pastel in the works of many artists of that time. At that time, there was no factory production method yet, and each painter created the mass himself, mixing any dyes with water and chalk to make the finished shade softer. After the mass had dried, it was cut into pieces, making a kind of “crayons”, with which, naturally, it was a little easier to draw precise details than with a brush.

True, due to the general dryness of the material, it does not adhere well to ordinary paper, so it was necessary to paint on rough surfaces, but still this did not stop such eminent masters as Renoir, Vrubel or Serov from actively using pastel. At the same time, you can find exclusively pastel paintings, but very often such dye on the canvas is combined with liquid types of paints.

Today, pastel is produced by hand only by real artists for their own use, but for the general public it is made at special enterprises on an industrial scale. To do this, take one or more dyes necessary to obtain the exact shade, and some kind of resin base that will hold the dye in a given form - for example, gum arabic.

Generally. the dyes may be completely different, but still For a classic pastel recipe, chalk is almost mandatory as a softening component. All necessary ingredients in the right proportions mixed and thoroughly ground together until they reach a state where it is no longer possible to separate them from each other.

The finished mass is laid out in special templates and molds, cut, and then pressed under high pressure. After this, the already formed blocks are sent to the oven, where they are dried in a very gentle mode - at a temperature of 60-80 degrees. The exact temperature and drying time depend on the proportions of the starting materials and the desired hardness of the final result, since in no case can you rely on chance. The fact is that pastel that is too dry will crumble in your hands and will not hold onto the future painting at all, but if it is not dried enough, it can deteriorate and become moldy, which is also not conducive to the successful creation of images.

The last stage is packaging. Pastel is a rather fragile material, and also very sensitive to excessive humidity, so it is usually packed in packages made of thick and dense cardboard, and the spaces between individual sticks are also additionally filled with foam rubber or any other soft filler.

Pastels usually arrive to the consumer in the form of a set - for a child, a standard one containing about 6-12 pieces is enough, but professionals can count on an incredible number of shades (up to 268 pieces).

Less commonly, pastels are also supplied in bulk form, but such a product is to a greater extent interesting to those who have been studying for a long time and persistently artistic craft. For a child, this option is useful only if he has already demonstrated amazing success in this matter.

Pros and cons

If we talk about children's creativity, then pastels specially designed for this purpose undoubtedly have many more advantages than disadvantages. Let's highlight the most important advantages:

• Softness. Compared to most pencils and crayons, children's pastels require much less effort to leave a mark. If for older children this is not so important, then for the youngest it is an important factor that allows them to start learning to draw earlier.

• Possibility of drawing on paper. It was only the original examples of pastels from centuries ago that necessarily required a rough surface in order to draw, but today's soft pastels, containing a fairly large amount of moisture, cling quite well to almost any horizontal surface.
• Overlapping layers. When placed on paper, the pastel is not absorbed into it, but covers the surface with a thin layer of its components - dye, chalk and a binder. This means that if there is any mistake, there is no need to remove the incorrect image from the surface of the paper.

It is enough to simply “repaint” this area again until the new image covers the old one. At the same time, light shading with one color on top of another will leave a certain transparency effect, creating new shades.

• Simplicity artistic methods . Pastel is also good because it does not require any additional devices. To paint with liquid paints, you need to dilute them correctly, learn how to hold a brush, mix shades, and so on, but you just need to hold pastel chalk in your hands. Unlike the same pencil, it does not need to be sharpened - it draws from all sides. At the same time, which will especially delight the little ones, the layer of pastel on the surface of the paper is perfectly smeared with a finger, which allows you to create even more vivid, albeit not always meaningful, images.
• Brightness and unusualness. In the end, pencils and felt-tip pens are a terrible banality, and watercolor technique Only a very small percentage of people master it at a relatively decent level. Pastel is a great opportunity to bring into your own creative life something new.

However, there are also certain disadvantages, because if pastel turned out to be completely devoid of disadvantages, it would seem strange why children usually draw with something other than this amazing medium. First of all, the wider use of pastels is hampered by the unfortunate fact that pastel drawings are very susceptible to environmental influences. Due to the dry nature of the dye, the canvas with the image cannot be bent, let alone simply shaken, because the painting covering its surface with a thin layer will simply crumble, and even if this does not happen entirely, the original idea will still be hopelessly destroyed.

Besides, High humidity also poses a danger to pastel paintings, After all, not only a bar of pastel, but also an entire pastel drawing can become moldy. Consequently, storing pastel creations at home can be quite problematic, and if a child has definitely achieved success in drawing, then he obviously wants to preserve his drawings for a longer period.

Pastel is ignored by many parents also because in some cases it costs much more than the same pencils. A high-quality set with a relatively modest configuration (12 colors) can cost the family budget up to five thousand rubles, but not every parent is ready to shell out such sums for the baby to receive just the first concept of drawing, albeit in the most comfortable conditions.

Perhaps in this situation you should just pay attention to cheaper products - sets with a smaller range of colors and from less well-known manufacturers can be found in the price segment up to 200 rubles.

At the very least, every child is literally obliged to try this material at least once in his life - who knows, what if this is his future?

Species

The choice of this material is not so simple - art pastels for drawing on paper are available in several varieties, each of which has its own purpose. Most often, based on consistency, pastels are divided into soft and hard, and which specific subspecies a substance belongs to is determined at the production stage by simply changing the proportions - either more dye and less connecting substance, or vice versa.

Due to the higher humidity, the soft variety adheres much more reliably to paper, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel to preserve the painting. However, this material crumbles very much, and you cannot drop it at all, otherwise you will end up with powder instead of chalk.

But professional pastel is always solid, it is used to make both the more familiar pastel crayons and pastel pencils. This substance is much stronger - it has such a high density that the pieces can even be sharpened, which is actively used by professional artists, using this option for drawing small details, shading and other similar purposes.

The chances that such a block will break on its own are much smaller, but it is always worth remembering that the mark from it does not have such an attractive brightness, and it is not worth trying to apply it to any paper.

Pastels are classified, of course, according to their configuration. Professional artists usually purchase either huge sets with dozens of various shades, or buy drawing material individually, simply replenishing the supplies they already have with the right colors. Of course, you can also buy individual pastel crayons for your child, but if he is just learning to draw, and this is also his first pastel, then for starters it is better to buy a relatively small set - 10-18 colors, maximum 24.

A child does not need a wider variety of colors at the initial stages - he has not yet sufficiently developed his vision of colors, so a wide variety of shades is more likely to drive him into a dead end rather than help him choose the ideal one.

It's another matter if this hobby- seriously and for a long time: then you can take sets of 36-48 colors, and although they will cost much more, it is worth considering that they also weigh much more. You can buy such a large set one day, and then simply replenish it with individual shades as needed.

Finally, it should be borne in mind that most dyes in the world are created not only for drawing on a plane, but also for decorating any three-dimensional objects, and pastel is no exception. In particular, You can use it to color crafts made from fabric. For example, it is often used to give a finished aesthetic look to foamiran flowers.

If we talk specifically about this material, it has a very smooth surface; therefore, it is better to choose a soft dye for it that leaves an expressive mark. However, in this branch of art, the choice of pastel very much depends on which particular fabric was preferred, so this topic deserves separate consideration.

Compound

In addition to the classic pastel, the composition of which as a whole has already been described above, there are other modern options, the ingredients in which are slightly different from the generally accepted recipe, which allows you to get a slightly different result with the overall similarity of the substance.

If classic recipe always produces more or less dry chalk, then alternative formulations are usually aimed at a wetter composition, which combines much better with paper, and therefore allows you to draw on almost any paper surface, and even with a long shelf life of the result. Let's take a closer look at all the alternative pastel variations:

• Oily. The name corresponds to reality - linseed oil acts as a kind of adhesive substance here. However, the pigment and oil alone would not stick together, so the crayons are pressed to a solid state. At the same time, the presence of fat is very noticeable - crayons leave greasy marks on the fingers, and over time, stains may even appear with reverse side paintings. Due to the presence of liquid fat (relatively high humidity), the colors are brighter, while the shades are difficult to mix, and they do not smudge with your finger at all, since they are absorbed into the paper, but on the other hand, such a design will not get dirty, and the lines on it will not float.

There is a technique for shading pastels already applied to paper using a solvent on a brush or a special stick, resulting in pictures similar to oil painting; however, any professional will immediately see the difference and appreciate the unusualness, so it is true artists who usually use this medium.

• Wax. In this type of pastel there is no oil, but there is polymer wax, which allows the substance to resemble oil pastel in its properties, but at the same time it costs less and gets dirty much less, which makes wax pastel crayons an ideal gift for children. Due to the specifics of the wax itself, such chalk even draws on glass, but does not leave any stains on your hands, and is generally somewhat harder. Often, wax pastels are used in combination with the usual watercolors or gouache, but only strictly on top of paint, because wax does not absorb water or allow it to pass through.
• Watercolor. This material is a cross between classic watercolors and pastels. It is also based on wax, but here this component is much inferior in percentage to dyes, so a simple drawing looks as if it was done with oil crayons, and a blurred one looks like it was made with watercolors using an unusual technique.

Watercolor pastel is almost the same thing as watercolor pencils, however, it leaves a brighter mark and is generally softer, and due to the larger contact surface it allows you to paint large objects faster.

Palette of shades

Another good thing about pastel is the ability to choose the desired shade as carefully as possible. Firstly, most of its varieties allow you to mix different colors, creating new shades that accurately convey the artistic intent of the author of the future painting. Secondly, for real artists, industrial enterprises produce a huge variety of colors, because in one set there can be more than two hundred different tones, the names of which are unknown to most ordinary people.

Colored pastels are sold not only in sets, but also individually, however, in order to find the right shade, you'll have to look for a really large specialized store.

Diversify even more color palette is possible if we take into account that different types pastels differ in greater or less brightness. Thanks to the combination of different recipes, you can achieve an almost unlimited number of tones that will make even an experienced artist confused.

At the same time, you should be careful when mixing different compounds - sometimes their properties are quite poorly compatible.

Firms

When choosing any new product for themselves, many people who do not understand the relevant industry prefer to rely on the name of a well-known famous brand - they say, since these guys have earned respect all over the world, it means they definitely do not produce bad products, and I will certainly be satisfied . Or, at least, I’ll get an undistorted idea of ​​what I’m trying to understand. This approach is largely fair.

If we talk about fairly expensive and professional pastels, then it’s probably worth paying attention to those brands that can be called specializing in such products. These include the Dutch company Rembrandt and their compatriots Talles, as well as a French brand Sennelier, famous for its simply stunning selection of shades, numbering 525 different tones!

However, it should be taken into account that the products of all these brands, being not just foreign, but also professional, will be very expensive, so for children's creativity If they buy it, it is either very rich parents, or those families in which real young talents are growing up.

Naturally, for budget use it is best to purchase domestic products, since on average they turn out to be much cheaper than foreign ones, although the question remains open regarding their quality. Of the Russian companies involved in the production of pastels, the products of the brand have gained a certain positive reputation Olki. At least, if we have to choose from ours, then knowledgeable people usually prefer it.

It must be said, however, that this list is far from complete. The range of the world's leading companies changes from year to year, ranking positions change places, and in general in creativity it is better to focus on some of your own criteria, and not at all on generally accepted ideals. That's why do not be afraid to purchase those types of pastels that are not mentioned in our article. Look for yours, and perhaps you will be more satisfied with your own find than with the advice of experts.

Additional items

Pastel is such a simple drawing device that you can use nothing at all except crayons and any suitable surface, but this does not mean that preference should necessarily be given to the most primitive technique.

Even take the same paper. Although wax pastels draw on anything, other types of crayons are not so tenacious, and special albums made of corrugated paper are produced for them, where even the texture itself will contribute to the unusual appearance of the masterpiece. In addition, in albums for drawing with pastels, different sheets are usually made not white, but simply in certain neutral shades, which allows you to play up the tone of the base to depict one of the details of the drawing.

Pastel differs from ordinary chalk in this way, which allows you to use additional means to make the result similar to oil painting.

Small children instinctively smear a layer of dye onto paper with their finger, which is even used professional artists and allows you to better feel the material, however, shading can be done with the help of other suitable objects. To do this, you can purchase ordinary painting brushes of varying thickness and hardness, and you can also often use pieces of an ordinary sponge. At the same time It is worth considering the properties of not only the shading tool, but also the pastel itself, because some varieties are easier to shade, while others are harder, but even those that can be smudged can do so with different effects.

Finally, it would be strange if pastel, which easily crumbles from many surfaces, lasted for so many centuries - ancient paintings using it simply would not have survived to this day, and it, at best, would have remained an option for children's temporary creativity. To ensure that the drawn material holds and even allows the canvas to shake during transportation, a special fixative, that is, a fixative. Today, the fixative is produced industrially and sold in small jars, from where it is sprayed through a spray bottle onto the painting, which is considered finished.

Home craftsmen claim that ordinary hairspray also copes with this task quite well.

How to choose?

In most cases, pastels are bought for those children who do not yet know how to draw at all, and parents just want to pamper their kids bright colors, and perhaps get interested in a new hobby. Therefore, the substance should be bright, not too hard, but at the same time not stain everything around it.

It also seems quite reasonable to wish that the chalk should not be too demanding on the surfaces on which the child will draw, because a beginner, and even a small one, is unlikely to have special corrugated albums and clamps at home. So it turns out that The best choice for a child is wax pastel in the form of crayons, which has all the desired qualities. To begin with, a small palette comparable to any other type of paint will suffice.

It’s a completely different matter if the child has already mastered the technique of drawing with pastels a little and is now at the stage of improving his skills. Firstly, in this case he has probably grown up a little and has gained an idea of ​​accuracy, so the requirements for the minimum soilability of a substance are no longer so strict. Secondly, now the pastel should offer more flexible opportunities for revealing its different properties - in some places it will need to be sharpened, in others it will need to be smeared with a brush and water.

It is also possible that none of the varieties of produced pastels can provide all the necessary properties at once, so the most reasonable solution is to combine them.

However, if all these criteria are really in demand by a child who still continues to make progress in drawing with pastels, it means that he already understands the topic much better than his parents, and only he knows what kind of substance he needs.

Many exercises have been invented to develop fine motor skills. Drawing with pencils is one of the most loved by children. Fortunately, today manufacturers offer a huge selection of such instruments: in wood and wax bodies, triangular and round in cross-section. Let's talk about each type in more detail.

Traditional pencils in a wooden case

Boxes with bright rods in a wooden “wrapper”, familiar from childhood, are the traditional tools of all young artists. How to choose the best option for your child?

• Sectional shape. For the first creative experiences Items with three sides are best. They teach the child in advance how to properly hold drawing and writing utensils in his hand. In addition, trihedrons are difficult to lose - if they fall from the table, they will not roll under the sofa. Hexagons have similar parameters. But it is better to refuse round sets.
• Lead hardness. It is important that the lead does not crumble in the body. Then the pencil will be easy to sharpen even with children's hands and will not become unusable after the first fall.

Watercolor pencils

Watercolor sets are the same paints placed in a wooden case. The rod itself is made of pressed watercolor. Drawings made using this technique are brighter and more expressive than regular pencil drawings. If the image is wet, it will be visually indistinguishable from a watercolor picture.

Wax pencils

Such sets are made of wax, which is tinted with food coloring. The pencil leads are soft, so little artists can create clear colored lines without any extra effort. In addition, they are easy to sharpen. Wax kits are suitable for first colorings with large details.

Dry pastel.
Pastels are colored crayons made from powdered pigment mixed with glue.

Pastels are made by mixing pure pigment and an inert filler, such as talc. (There are several types of oil pastels; these will be discussed later.) The components of the pastel are held together with a weak binder, usually gum tragacanth, which is secreted by some Middle Eastern shrubs. The addition of varying amounts of titanium or zinc white to pure pigment results in a variety of tones of each color; The more white you add, the lighter the tone.

There are two main types of pastels: soft (round in shape and hard (square in shape). There are pastel pencils. They do not get your hands dirty, they work more accurately, but their color range is less varied.
Colored pastel crayons can be purchased individually or in sets, where they are distributed according to the colors of both the general range and the target, for example, landscape. It is necessary to use special textured paper for pastels. Sharpen the crayons with sandpaper. Pastel strokes smear easily and therefore require a fixative. The latter must be used carefully so that the colors do not darken.

ARTIST'S ADVICE
Hard and soft pastels are often used simultaneously. The first is suitable for obtaining large color spots in the early stages of work. If you use the sides of the crayon and apply little pressure, this pastel will fill the entire depression of the paper surface, as is the case with soft pastels, so that you get a good base for subsequent layers.

Soft pastel
Soft pastels are used most often. It has the widest selection of colors and shades. The main part of the crayons is round in cross-section and has a length of 5-8 cm. Usually the crayons are wrapped in paper, which prevents them from crumbling (some varieties are very soft and crumble easily).

Hard pastel
Hard pastel crayons are usually rectangular in cross-section and are not wrapped in paper. Their relative hardness is due to the large amount of binder used in production. As a result, the pastel crumbles less. These chalks are ideal for linear work, and their sides can be used to cover large areas with color.

ARTIST'S ADVICE
For pastel bases, it is better to use pastel pencils than graphite, as it is greasy and will push away the pastel placed on top.

Soft pastel colors come in a variety of tones from light to dark.

Hard pastel, which became such because large quantity special additives are easier to use than soft ones.

In terms of hardness, pastel pencils are midway between soft and hard pastels.

ARTIST'S ADVICE
A complex mixture of pastel strokes looks boring and dirty. Use pastel crayons and colored pencils alternately to achieve the desired shade. At the first stage, you should not overload the paper with colored layers, otherwise it will be difficult to add new shades later.

Oil pastels and crayons.
Oil pastels are colored crayons that are held together with oil rather than glue, giving them an oily feel. These crayons come in both hard and soft. Soft pastel crayons mix well, while hard ones are used for drawing details. They can also be used in combination with a solvent - turpentine or white spirit. The oil component of pastels makes the colors deep, and they can be opaque, semi-transparent or transparent. Such pastels give the impression of oil paints and do not crumble. Oil pastels do not dry out, so you need to use a fixative.
Oil crayons are oil paint in the form of crayons. The strokes they make can be mixed with oil paint from tubes. The crayons contain driers and do not require a fixative, but wet strokes are easy to smear.

ARTIST'S ADVICE
Oil pastels can be layered, just like dry pastels. Since it is a greasy material, the texture of the paper fills up quickly, so try not to overdo it at first.

Pastel pigments are identical to pigments of other paints - watercolors, tempera, oils. The treatises mention such pigments as cinnabar, varnish, umber, red umber, yellow ocher, twice-burnt ocher or trippelerde, bolus, English brown, black chalk, lead white. The range of pigments used for pastel painting by the 1770s made it possible, according to J. Russell's list, to produce 280 shades of pastel.

John Russell. Portrait of a lady. Pastel

During the restoration of the portrait of Mrs. Marton, created by D. Gardner in pastel and gouache on paper at the end of the 18th century, various studies were carried out, the results of which were published. The following pigments were found in the paint layer: Prussian blue, Prussian blue, yellow ocher, lead white, yellow lake, carbon black, smalt, burnt sienna and iron oxide red.

Johann Bardou. Portraits of Nikolai Fedorovich and Sofia Osipovna Apraksin, 1880s. State Historical Museum

As a result of technical and technological studies of pastel portraits of the 1780s by I. Bardou from the collection of the State Historical Museum, yellow ocher, soot, lead white, Prussian blue, yellow organic pigment, cinnabar, red organic pigment, chalk were identified in the paint layer242.
By the end of the 19th century, the range of pigments had expanded significantly.

The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1897) gives the following list of pigments most commonly found in pastel pencils: zinc white, chalk, light ocher, calcined zinc oxide, yellow and red chrome, cadmium, red ocher, cinnabar, Venetian red, gallstone, garance , indigo, Prussian or Prussian blue, Prussian brown, umber, smalt, cobalt, ultramarine, Indian gall and carmine, as well as green, prepared from a mixture of blue and yellow powders.

E. Degas. Singer in green. Pastel. 1884.

There is also data on the composition of later pastels turn of the XIX century- XX centuries, in particular according to the works of Claude Monet and Edgar Degas, in which ocher, Prussian blue, emerald green, chrome yellow, zinc and lead white are identified.

Claude Monet. Untitled, early 1860s. Pastel on board
Private Collection of 1975 Stanford Law School Alumnus

The inherent property of lead white to darken as a result of a chemical reaction with sulfur-containing substances in the air is widely known, a phenomenon often observed, for example, in watercolor portraits of the 19th century, when lace painted with white becomes black.

V.Gau. Portrait of Princess A.S. Urusova, nee Uvarova. 1839
Cardboard, watercolor, white lead, graphite pencil, varnish
The black lace on the dress is darkened lead white.

As a result of laboratory studies of pastel portraits on primed canvases of the 1780s from the collection of the State Historical Museum, the presence of a surface layer was discovered in a sample taken from the background dark brown, consisting of lead dioxide PbO2 and representing a product of the change in lead white. Thus, it can be argued that the dark brown backgrounds of pastels on canvas of the late 18th century, the ground of which contains lead white without an oil binder, initially looked somewhat different, most likely much lighter. This changes our view of the painting style of pastel artists of that time and the range of colors they used.

Substances such as white pipe clay, chalk, gypsum, porcelain clay, magnesia, talc (“tailor’s chalk”), which in this case also play the role of weak binders and plasticizers, are introduced into pastel pencils as fillers to differentiate tones. The list of materials for pastels also includes zinc white (mentioned in connection with pastels that had to be fixed), antimony white (“regule d’antimoine”), and even includes cosmetic lotions prepared by perfumers.

In the 18th century, it was believed that the superiority of colored crayons lay largely in their softness. This quality was achieved by using white chalk as a filler; chalk from France or Spain was considered the best, as well as pearl (mother-of-pearl) white. Gypsum and kaolin were considered low quality fillers and were only used with pigments such as smalt or lapis lazuli, which required a stronger binder.

Gummarabic - acacia gum

The main binders for pastels are usually gums: gum arabic, tragacanth, as well as materials such as dextrin, milk, sugar, malt decoction, starch.

Tragacanth- air-dried gum (gum tragacanth), which flows from cracks or cuts in the pillar or needles of some plants of the genus Astragalus ( Astragalus) family Legumes ( Fabaceae).

Gum arabic was used throughout the 18th century, especially for pigments that did not harden easily. Tragacanth was more common. It was dissolved along with other means, for example, a special admixture that caused fermentation of malt (“alewort”), which thickened when boiled. They used fig juice, beer (either pure or thickened by boiling), milk and whey. To soften sticks based on gypsum and kaolin, it was recommended to use olive and linseed oils.

I. Bard. Portrait of an unknown man in a blue uniform. 1980s State Historical Museum
Pastel on primed canvas

When examining a portrait of an unknown person in a blue uniform from the collection of the State Historical Museum (I. Bardu, 1780s), Prussian blue was discovered in a sample taken from the image of clothing in the form of a varnish on a resin binder. There is evidence that J. Russell also used the resin to make pastel sticks.
Plasticizers were also introduced into the pastel composition: boiled sugar, honey water and Venetian soap. The use of binders and plasticizers varied with different pigments and hence the proportions of the mixtures varied with different color options.

Handmade pastel crayons

Typically, pastels are made in the form of pencils wrapped in paper, without a wooden frame. Pastel sticks are fragile and loose, but at the same time strong enough not to break in the artist’s hands. In addition, pastel pencils are now available in wooden frames, allowing for a fine stroke and ideal for restoration tinting. Initially, many artists prepared their own pastel pencils. Making good pastels is based on a balanced balance between two extremes - hardness and softness. It is achieved by very precise dosage of raw materials: pigments, binders, impurities.

R. Carriera. Self-portrait with a portrait of his sister. 1715. Uffizi
Pastel on paper

The composition of pastel pencils has always been of interest to artists who invented their own recipes.
The brilliant pastelist R. Carriera was keenly interested in technical research and selected the best pastel (in her opinion, Parisian) and the best binder, using sculptural chalk and crushed sea shell shells instead of ordinary gum. Nevertheless, she wrote in one of her letters: “I could say a lot about pastel, but I firmly know that the success of a work of art depends not on the artist’s pencils or paper, but on something else.”

Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, by Unknown artist, probably after 1625. National Portrait Gallery, London.

This is how they advise making “pencils of all colors, mainly for faces” in T.T.’s manuscript. de Mayerna of the 17th century:
“One of the materials suitable for this is chalk, with which you need to mix paints: cinnabar, varnish, umber, yellow ocher. They wash it with milk and make pencils from it. Another material is clay, from which tobacco pipes are made; it must be mixed with water.
This type of pencil lasts longer, is less fragile and is very easy to apply. The varnish, which is very dry and difficult to apply to paper, must be mixed with clay diluted with Venetian soap dissolved in water. First, rub all these mixtures well on the marble (as paints are made), then make sticks out of them, which you level with a spatula or a small, very smooth wooden plank; let it dry in the sun or in the shade, in a clean place.”

Antonio Van Dyck Dyck Anthony Van Self Portrait with a Sunflower

Next, de Mayern gives another recipe for making pencils of all colors for painting on paper, communicated to him on July 31, 1634 by Leonard, a young Flemish artist, assistant to Monsieur Cari, a student of Monsieur Van Dyck:
“You need to take paints, rub them very thinly on the stone and figure out what admixture of plaster each of them can tolerate without significant change. Some allow more admixture, others, like varnish, for example, less; some - half, a quarter, a third, others - a fifth or sixth. Add to your finely erased paints gypsum made from alabaster, burned until completely white, and make a paste with a small amount of water (keeping the measure), which you roll in the palm of your hand in the shape of pencils ... In my opinion, old, previously used plaster, white as snow, crushed into a fine powder, is better and does not bind as strongly as freshly burned plaster, but it must be mixed with milk or rotten glue in order for pencils to It was possible to make thin ends. See what can be done with white marl, with white bolus, with chalk, which is considered best, with slaked lime, well washed and dried, etc. Earths such as bolus, double-burnt ocher or trippelerde, English brown, red umber, etc. do not require any admixture, just like black chalk, as long as it is soft...”

In the same manuscript we find another method for preparing pastel pencils:
“The substance from which the base of pencils is made is gypsum, in large burnt pieces of which there are two substances: one is hard, like stone, and from it very soft pencils that lie down like sanguine; another substance - somewhat worse, but still very good, which shines like grains sea ​​salt. Extract and separate these substances from the rest and grind them into a fine powder, but only when you want to work, otherwise the crushed plaster, if it is old and changed by the action of air, deteriorates, quenches and does not bind.
Take the paints and rub them on a stone with water, and when well mixed, pour in a sufficient quantity of your plaster to bind, stirring thoroughly with a trowel, knife, or erasing stone, so that everything is well combined; then gather your paste into a long mold of sufficient length to cut pencils from, let the paste thicken, dry, and then cut into pencils according to your desire with a very fine and fine saw, and place them in a very clean box in a dry place.
If your pencils do not form clear lines due to the hardening of the plaster, then you need, when erasing your paint with water, rub a little Venetian soap into it, making sure that there is not too much soap; its excess is revealed by the fact that the pencils, when dry, become shiny, as if they had been polished; if they are well made, they should be matte, soft and lie like the softest chalk that can be. Take completely raw clay, prepared for making tobacco pipes from it, add to it whatever colors you want and make pencils of sufficient length, letting them dry on their own. This material can be obtained in quite finished form all the working potters."

J. Monnier cites recipes from a later time, “found by Monsieur Prince Robert.” One of them is an excerpt from Gautier of Nimes’ treatise “The Art of Washing...” of 1687:
“Take white clay, intended for making tobacco pipes, and grind it on porphyry or tortoiseshell, adding ordinary water so as to obtain a dough-like mass; and take the colors that you like, each one separately, and dry-pound them on a stone, the thinnest you can find, then sift them through taffeta or very fine cloth, and mix each color with this paste according to the way you want color it, more or less; add a little regular honey and as much gum arabic water as you like. For each paint, prepare a darker or less dark paste to create light spots or shadows. Then take each of the pastes and make round sticks the size of your finger, rolling them between two very clean boards or on paper in the shade for two days; Then, to finish drying, you need to put them in the sun or in front of the fireplace. When they are dry, they are used with a feeling of satisfaction.”

Pastel pencils Conte, 48 pcs. Set in a metal box. Conté à Paris, France.

Another recipe is taken from the 1766 treatise "Secrets Concerning the Arts and Crafts":
“Suppose we want to make red pencils. In this case, I consider whether the red paint has gum in it, if it has gum in it, I do not use water with gum, but plain water. And if there is no gum in it, I use gum very slightly diluted with water. So I take cinnabar to make a pencil. I have water with gum and also white lead and very white plaster. I put it all together, making small colored sticks that serve me for drawing in the same manner as if I were drawing with graphite or a red pencil.
Using them in practice will make masters of the situation of those who want to make these hard pencils. For most often they are made too soft and thus, worn down too quickly, they do not allow drawing with them; or in another case, when they are too hard due to too much gum in the water, they cannot be marked with them. You can get rid of these defects by pounding the sticks on the marble again and adding water and gum if they were too soft; or adding more paint to them if they were too hard, and finally, if the pencils are too weak and don’t have enough color in them, you can add more paint to restore them to the state you want.”

Similar recipes can be found in Russian publications starting from the 80s of the 18th century. For example, the magazine “Economic Store” published advice from A.T. Bolotov on making red pencils (sanguine): he recommends washing the corresponding paint with a small amount of soap (Venetian or the best plain soap), adding a little milk and gum to this mixture to soften it and then forming pencils of the desired size from it.

Engraving by L. A. Seryakov from an illustration from the book by A. T. Bolotov. Fragment.
Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov (October 7, 1738 - October 3 or 4, 1833) - Russian writer, memoirist, moral philosopher, scientist, botanist and forester, one of the founders of agronomy and pomology in Russia

In a collection of recipes of various kinds (including culinary ones), published in 1791 by A.G. Reshetnikov, there is also a recipe “On making dry paints or pencils of all sizes”: “Take some white smoking tobacco pipes and rub them on the stove with plain water very finely and as thick as dough, then, taking all the colors of paints or what you need will be, grind each of them on the stove as finely as possible, sift them through a thin cloth or fleur, so that only their dust can pass through it, or better yet, grind them also on water, which, having collected each separately, mix with the mentioned dough, choosing colors or flowers for shading from one paint, that is: make the first color of paint darker and, separating part of it, add a little more clay, then the color will be lighter... finally mix in white honey and a small part of gum water, but it should Be careful not to put gum into it, because it can bind them so tightly that they will be hard and completely incapable of drawing. From this dough they make sticks as thick as half a little finger, rolling out the dough with a board, then drying them by placing them on paper for two days, drying them in the sun or in the oven until ready.”

Some inventors, concerned about the safety of pastels, proposed methods for making crayons that led to a complete loss of the features of the pastel technique, that is, in essence, to the creation of a new type of painting. For example, it was proposed to mix pastel dough with wax or deer fat.

Modern oil pastel

To summarize, the process of making pastel sticks can be reduced to the following stages: first, the pigments were ground on marble, mixing them with water (or alcohol), then a binder was added. We started by making a paste of white pigment, to which others were then added. The best pigments were taken and sifted through the fabric. After the paste was ground, we began to form the crayons: a ball was formed from the paste by hand, then a cylinder, which was gradually narrowed at both ends. In another method, the crayons could be rolled out on a sheet of paper or between two wooden planks. The pastel sticks were then placed on a chalk surface, on paper or on a clean piece of wood that absorbs moisture, and dried in the sun or near a fire. The sticks were grouped by shade and distributed among the cells of the box. The bottom of the cells was covered with bran as a substrate for crayons; this not only protected them from contamination, but also prevented breakage.

Make Your Own Pastels

Industrial production and trade of pastels

As the popularity of pastels increased, its production gradually expanded and took on an industrial character. This was facilitated by the cosmopolitan nature inherent in Rococo painting, which was expressed in the itinerant lifestyle of the artists. Traveling throughout Europe in search of aristocratic patrons and clientele, they introduced local artists to the pastel technique, encouraging them to make paints based on local raw materials. Trade in pastels, like other art materials, began in the 17th century. This may have coincided with a period of dissolution of the guilds and apprenticeships in the studios. There is evidence that in the 18th century several centers supplied pastels. Pastel sticks were traded in Rome and Paris, and it became more profitable for artists to buy them rather than make them themselves. However, for example, in the French provinces early XVIII centuries, it was still not easy to find ready-made pastels. In mid-century London, "perfect sets of crayons" were sold. By that time, trade in pastels had become common in large artistic centers, and only a few artists continued to make their own crayons.

In Russia, in particular in St. Petersburg, already at the end of the 18th century, a pastelist could acquire necessary materials. We read in the St. Petersburg Gazette for 1786: “On Sennaya from Gorokhovaya to the market in the 2nd building above the iron benches, boxes of dry paints in sticks of different types are sold, small boxes for 1 ruble, large boxes for 2 rubles.” In 1794, an announcement appeared about the first stationery store “on Moika, No. 284 at the powder factory,” where they sold different types of paper, parchment, “chalk of different colors,” as well as “books teaching the art of drawing, and everything related to drawing or belongs to writing." Suppliers of raw materials were traditionally pharmacists, and suppliers of pastel paints themselves were artists, wholesalers, book and print sellers.

Full-scale commercial production and trade in pastels began in the late 18th century with the establishment of firms such as William Reeves (1766) in England, Lefranc (1775), Girault (1780) and Paillard (1788) in France. Pastels of Swiss and French origin were highly valued. French chemist and biologist Henri Rocher founded the company in 1875, which today is known as the “House of Pastels”. A. Rocher began with a hundred shades, gradually bringing them to five hundred. By 1914, already 1000 were produced, and currently - more than 1650 shades.

Industrial production of pastels consists of several phases:
1. Weighing the constituent components.
2. Grinding and softening of pigments and impurities in a binder diluted with water using a special paint grinder.
3. Squeezing the resulting paste - obtaining the so-called “wet cake”. The solid paste - “wet cake” - is introduced into a die, where it is pressurized into a cylindrical shape approximately 1 m long.
4. Cutting into sticks.
5. Drying for about 2 weeks.