Do you ever wonder whether pastel is a drawing or a painting medium?

I often get asked the question, “Aren’t pastels used for sketching, and not a real painting medium?” It’s an understandable question, given all the myths that have surrounded pastel for centuries. Myths like, “Pastels are incredibly fragile” and, “The colors fade quickly.” These misconceptions have no substance at all, yet they have remained in the culture for generations. Let’s take a brief review of pastel history to guide us.

Left: Sketch by Leonardo's assistant, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Right: Andrea Quaratesi by Michelangelo Buonarroti 1532

Renaissance masters like Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1510) and Michelangelo (1475-1564), used natural chalks for drawing and creating preparatory studies. It was from this origin that the medium of pastel was born. Originating in Northern Italy in the 16th century, it was produced from pure powdered pigments mixed with enough gum Arabic, fish or animal glue to bind them together. Pastel was only available in red, black and white at the start. Now, there are literally thousands of different hues and shades available with incredible light-fastness and an almost limitless shelf-life.

Pastel became quite fashionable during the 1700’s, with pastel portraits garnering the same prices as oil commissions in Britain. It was considered to be the height of fashion to have your portrait captured with a “crayon painting” as the affluent called them at the time.

Frances Cotes, Portrait of Topham Beauclerk, 26x21.5” pastel, 1756

Yet fashions shifted, and pastel fell out of favor by 1820, with few professional artists using it at all. Then in the 1860’s, impressionists like Edgar Degas began to use pastel in new and exciting ways, and literally transformed the public perception of pastels from a sketching tool to a legitimate painting medium. Before long, titans of impressionism such as Monet, Gauguin, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Matisse were using pastel.

Edgar Degas, After the Bath, 1890-1893, 26x20.75” Pastel on mounted paper

Degas demonstrated for us that pastel can be used as a brilliant and complex painting medium to develop richly pigmented works of fine art that now hang proudly alongside their oil siblings in the greatest museums of the world.

Artists of today continue their exploration of pure pigment as a painting medium. Washes and underpainting techniques have developed on a variety of sanded pastel surfaces. This has enabled a range of painterly methods in pastel to take on even more variety. There is no limit to the ways pastel can be used to produce painting effects that last for generations with excellent lightfastness. From thin, transparent qualities to bold, opaque colorful marks, pastel is capable of bringing your unique creative vision to life.

“Entrance to the Mill,”12x8” pastel on sanded paper

“Entrance to the Mill” was recently created en plein air in Southern France, depicting a stone doorway that led into an authentic working French mill. Using an underpainting wash with pastel to create a transparent layer of soft-edged atmosphere, I then applied soft pastel directly over to add bold mark making and sparkling color. This kind of wet-in-wet approach to painting is generally considered the domain of oil painters, yet here we enjoy these visual qualities in pastel.

With access to higher quality and greater diversity of pastel sticks and surfaces than ever before in the history of art, it is a wonderful time to be a pastel painter. I want to invite you to join me in furthering the rich tradition of innovation that pastel has to offer, and take part in a colorful renewal that is taking place.

Let's paint!
Alain Picard