 I love pastels... have I mentioned that? Click HERE to see a lovely slide show of paintings by some of the best pastelists in the country.
“Pastel” is not a way to describe a child's nursery room. Nor is it chalk. It is pure color, the same pure pigment as found in oil paints, acrylic paints, watercolor. It simply has a different binder to hold it together in a stick form. These sticks can be square or round, so soft they almost crumble in your hands or so hard you have to scribble with pressure to make a mark. They all come under the category of soft (sometimes called dry) pastels, nevertheless.
There are countless brands of soft pastels, all offering hundreds of different colors and degrees of softness. Artists all claim favorite brands. Mine happen to be Nupastels, Schminke and Terry Ludwig. As for support, many artists use sanded paper that helps to hold the pigment on. Kitty Wallis paper allows for many layers of pastel, and other brands allow for other techniques. I like Wallis for some subject matter, and I have enjoyed Pastelmat, Art Spectrum and Canson with color tints for  other subject matter. The California condor pictured here was painted on a black Canson paper, and I used a scumbling technique that allowed the black to show through for a rough effect.
Pastel artists use easels in an upright position generally, to allow the pastel dust to fall down and away from the painting. When complete, the artist will shake and tap the painting to eliminate all loose dust. Pastel paintings must be framed under glass and separated from the glass by a spacer to avoid smearing.
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