What is pastel chalk

Soft and oil pastels have a buttery or waxy texture that is well suited to painterly effects. When you cover the entire surface of the support with pastels it's called a pastel painting. You can also get harder pastels that are suited to drawing, sketching and precise detail work.

When parts of the support show through, it's typically referred to as a pastel drawing. This versatility means that you can use pastels for all kinds of subjects and genres. My photorealist painting of the stuffed animal above left was created entirely with pastels. As was my stylized portrait on the right and my landscape painting below. One of my favorite applications for pastels is sidewalk chalk drawings.

I attend a sidewalk art festival every year and am always inspired and amazed by the creativity and ingenuity of pavement artists. If you like to start practicing with pastels check out my how to use pastels tutorial.

For now, lets look at quality , colors , safety and pastel types. You can buy pastels in two main grades: artists' quality and students' quality. Artists' quality pastels contain the best pigments available and a higher ratio of pigment to binder. This means that artists' colors are stronger and more intense. They also have high permanence ratings, which means that they won't fade over time.

Students' quality pastels are much cheaper but usually contain cheaper pigments. They'll also contain more filler and binder, which means the colors won't be as intense, but they won't crumble as easily as artists' quality pastels. Because they contain such high levels of pigment, pastels can be expensive. But after the initial cost of buying a range of colors, it's not too expensive to buy additional pastels individually when needed.

If you'd like to experiment with pastels but aren't yet willing to invest in artists' colors, I'd recommend you buy a cheap students' set. It's better to just start making art with whatever supplies you can afford, but if you're serious about pastel painting and drawing you'll eventually need to buy artists' quality pastels.

You'll really notice the difference! Pastel colors can be blended together but they don't mix nearly as well as paint. To compensate for this, pastel manufacturers offer a huge range of colors. Pastels can be purchased in sets or individually. If you're just starting out you first need to choose which type of pastels you want to buy. If you're not sure, start off by buying your pastels individually which will keep costs down.

Once you know which type you really want to invest in, you can think about buying a set containing a good starter palette of colors or you can select your own custom range of colors. Some artists' colors are more expensive than others because certain pigments are rare or expensive to mine or produce. Students' quality pastels may contain stand-in pigments which mimic the color of costlier natural pigments. If a cheaper pigment is used as a substitute it will have the word "hue" after the pigment name.

When using soft pastels you need to be mindful that they often deposit fine dust into the air which you can easily inhale into your lungs. There are now non-toxic pastels availble, but it's wise to take steps to avoid breathing in pastel dust. Some artists wear face masks, but I find them very uncomfortable.

When the weather permits I like to work outside. Failing that, I'll work in a well ventilated room. I recently purchased an air purifier which makes pastel painting safer and also relieves my husband's allergies.

There are five main types of pastels : soft, PanPastel, hard, pencil, and oil. They are all essentially pigment in stick form or pans , but they differ in how they're bound together. Soft pastels, hard pastels, and pastel pencils are all bound with a gum or resin binder which means that they're compatible with one another and can be used on the same painting or drawing.

Oil pastels, on the other hand, are bound with oil and wax , which gives them a unique texture similar to oil paints, but it means they can't be mixed with the other pastel types. Soft pastels are the traditional form of pastels and also the most used. They have a very high concentration of pigment that is held together by the least amount of gum binder as possible.

As a result, they crumble very easily, but their colors are wonderfuly intense. This fragile consistency and powdery texture makes them well suited to blending, layering on lots of color, and for painterly effects.

You can also use the edges for fine lines, but most artists use hard pastels or pastel pencils for detail work and preliminary sketches. Soft pastels come in a wide range of colors - more than other pastel types - with some manufactuers offering up to colors! Soft pastels come in cylindrical sticks and a range of sizes : whole sticks, half sticks, and thick sticks.

You can buy them individually, but if you're buying your first pastels it may be easier to buy a starter set with a balanced color palette that you can build on over time. Each manufacturer uses a slightly different formula which can affect the powdery texture and how easily they crumble. You may need to experiment to find a brand that best suits your style. If you're looking for the very best, both Sennelier and Rembrandt soft pastels are consistently praised by artists.

I've provided links below to the relevant products so that you can easily find them on Blick Art Materials, my favorite online art supplier. I'm a member of Blick's affiliate program , which means if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links, I'll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Your purchase helps support this site and keeps it free of ads.

Click here for more info. If you make a purchase via the links below I receive a small commission, which helps support this site. PanPastels are a form of soft pastels, but instead of being molded into sticks, they are set into pans or jars. Pastel pencils are used for the best control in painting by a lot of artists.

They are enclosed in wood, just like a pencil, and have a touch on paper between hard and soft pastels. Oil pastels are pigment with a binder of oil instead of gum. They will not crumble or smudge and do not have to have a fixative sprayed on a finished painting. But…they do not blend at all and there is not a lot of color choices for oil pastels.

The little pans of color! They stack and interlock making for easy storage — and easy for on the go. We love the little sponge tools and the ones that look like eye shadow applicators. We love the variation and freshness pan pastels offer us. Pan pastels are a new-found freedom of expression in art. Do you and your artists learn best with video art lessons?

Today, artists value pastels for their rich pigment and easy layering. A rewarding medium, chalk pastels yield beautiful compositions that require no dry time and remain workable until sprayed with a fixative. Try out the age-old medium and browse our best chalk-set picks below. This color pack of pastels includes necessary artist colors such as cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue, and burnt sienna. Composed of rich, velvety pigment, these pastels have less breakage and produce less dust than your average stick.

Use the chalk dry to produce colors that match the Prismacolor palette, or crush them into a powder and mix the dust with water, to lay down vibrant liquid layers. Nontoxic, acid-free, and rain durable, these Street Stix are ideal for creating outdoor murals and sidewalk art. The jumbo size of each stick makes filling in large surface areas a breeze, and the highly pigmented colors blend well to produce vibrantly colored effects.

With 12 sticks per pack, each set includes colors ranging from scarlet to violet. A great buy for the classroom, these chalk pastels come at a fraction of the price, compared to other products on this list.

Featuring 24 colors per pack, each stick is equal parts vibrant and velvety, and the wide assortment guarantees colorful compositions.