Pastel class May 20, 2009
Pastels Start to Finish, a six week class at the Richmond Art Museum.
Instructor: Carol Strock Wasson
Thanks to the Richmond Art Museum for beginning these classes, I will post a blog the next day after each class. If you are benefiting in from these blog classes and want to help and encourage more educational opportunities please send a donation to the Richmond Art Museum.
If your are new to pastels or even if you’ve had them a long time, one of the first things you should do is catalog your pastels. You don't need to buy anything fancy or expensive. I use a college composition book, cheap and easy to get.
Many people ask what kind of pastel should I get. Start with Rembrandts or Gallery, these are a medium hardness pastel and are easy to pick up almost anywhere. As you collect pastels you will want to get some of the buttery soft pastels, Schminke, Unison, etc. I wait for a sale online and buy sets or open stock.
To begin cataloging pastels write down the brand name on the top line of the page you start on, Schminke, Unison, Mount Vision, Girault, Great American, Rembrandt, etc.
With the pastel make a good sized square of the color and next to the color swatch write the number and
the color name.
After you turn the page to start a new page remember to not use the back of the paper
but start on a fresh sheet each time.Continue to do the same with all your pastels.
Save several sheets of paper in the book for each company.
My notebook with one of my Schminke pages.
As you use your pastels and need to replace certain colors you can easily identify the company
and the color name and number that you need to reorder. This will save you time and money when you need that certain color of blue or green. There are many internet companies that have open stock of pastels. I wait until they go on sale and then buy 3 or 4 of each color I need. I also try to buy a new color that I do not have and add it to my composition notebook.
The next part of this lesson is about value and how to sort your pastels. There are many ways to sort pastels so that you know what you have and can use your colors.
Value(lightness or darkness) is the method I use.
I sort my pastels by five values (lightness or darkness) into five boxes. I use plastic shoe boxes.
Very Light, Light, Medium, Dark and Very Dark
(Cornmeal will keep the pastels clean and seperate, it really works)
To help decide which box the colors go into, create a value chart using white, grey and black pastels. As shown below.
In this exercise I have used 11x14 white copy paper from the local office supply store. Make seven columns as shown below.
With this done start deciding which column your colors belong. This will begin the process of training your eye see color as value and seeing color relationships. Here is my finished value chart.
As you are doing this you may find that you have too many mediums colors and not enough darks and lights. It's very easy to order a dark or light set of pastels to add to your collection.
Separating colors by value before you paint helps you paint by value not color. Thus you can make wiser choices about what colors you use.
This method may or may not work for you, tell me how you sort your pastels. Color, temperature?
Email is you have questions.
Carol Strock Wasson
All information and images provided in this lesson are copyrighted, May 20,2009.
