Margaret Garrington

Artists have long valued the medium of pastel for its immediacy in application and fabulous colors. Pastel paintings have now also entered a time of increased interest to collectors. Traditionally used as a sketching medium, for over 100 years artists have also used pastels for finished work. Some of the most famous artists who used pastels in new ways for their times include the Europeans Degas, Manet, Delacroix, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Renoir, and the Americans Whistler, Hassam, Cassatt, O’Keefe, Prendergast, Stella, and William Merritt Chase, my personal favorite. Well known contemporary artists working in pastel today include Janet Fish, Albert Handel, Elizabeth Mowry, and Doug Dawson.

The medium of pastel can be traced as far back as the 16th century. Pastel paintings are very durable, permanent and, as many of the famous masterworks show, the color brilliancy will last indefinitely with proper care. Artists have used the pastel medium for hundreds of years and many of these art works still exist fresh and colorful as the day they were applied. Pastels do not yellow and the color does not oxidize, change, or fade with age.

Quality pastels start out as pure pigment in the form of colored powder, the same used in making all fine art paints. These pigments are derived from any number of mineral, plant, or chemical sources. Adding a small amount of inert binder to the powder results in a paste that can then be rolled or pressed into a pastel stick. The type of binder used dictates the hardness or softness of the pastel and will affect the character of the stroke. Hard pastels can give a more linear appearance to a stroke or can be used to fill in large areas of the preliminary sketch. These are usually used in the first stages of a pastel painting in a process called underpainting. The softer consistency pastels are used over the harder pastels and give rich, intense, full colors.

The texture of the working surface for a pastel painting provides the tooth needed for the pastel to adhere. Surfaces for pastel paintings can be textured paper or stiff card, sandpaper, pastel cloth, or even canvas. The more textural the working surface, the more layers of pastel may be overlaid to create a painting of depth and intensity. Depending on the texture and color of the surface, the pastel artist creates a different mood or feeling for the finished painting.

Dry and solid, pastels are blended on the working surface rather than on a separate palette like the wet mediums of oil, acrylic, or watercolor. Blending pastel colors on the surface can take many forms. Finger, torchon, brush, or cloth blending can create a smooth uninterrupted surface. Crosshatching or laying down adjacent open strokes or dots of different colors allows the eye to optically blend colors. The grainy texture of pastel lends itself to being used on a tinted support, with the underlying color providing an overall tonal value for the piece. The application of pastels can also use water or turpentine to achieve different effects. This versatility, in and of itself, as well as the ability to combine pastel with other mediums, adds to the endless adaptations an artist can explore when using pastels. Use of the pastel medium provides an artist with the enjoyment of having a rainbow of colors to work from and knowing many effects possible with other mediums can also be achieved with pastel.

I am often asked what the difference is between a pastel drawing and a pastel painting. My definition of a pastel drawing is a piece in which most of the underlying working surface is visible. Many of the masters employed pastels to draw studies as reference for future oil paintings. A pastel painting, however, covers the surface with only hints of the underlying paper visible. Understandably, there are as many different definitions and working approaches as there are artists and, therefore, it is hard to strictly categorize the pastel medium. Maybe that is what is most appealing to me about pastels: there are no limitations, just pure artistic exploration opportunities.

Having worked with soft pastels for ten years, I have found the medium a unique bridge between drawing and painting. For a painter who loves color, the directness of the heavily pigmented pastel stick to paper is intoxicating. Pastel is pure color in hand as compared to mediums where intermediary implements like brushes are required. The immediate way in which pastel can be worked lends to an incredible freshness and rich bold colors that have helped me to develop a personal style.

Margaret Garrington is represented by the Blue Heron Gallery in Ashland, Oregon.
Visit her virtual gallery at www.studiofox.com. For information about pastel instruction
contact the artist at (541) 482-8559