Pastel Painting with Jane

Pastel: pure pigment mixed with a binding agent such as gum tragacanth and formed into a stick. Pastel is applied directly to the supporting medium (paper, canvas), and any color blending is done there.

I love pastels. I love painting. I love writing. And I love writing about painting. (Hmm. I haven't painted about writing yet, but it's only a matter of time...) So I leaped at the opportunity to develop an entire website devoted to my favorite medium.

Painting is a very visual medium, so some of the articles will be very image intensive. You've been warned...

Feature - Cleaning Dingy Sticks. NEW - Okay, so your pastels have all been handled so much they all look grey. It's okay. Give them a bath.
Debugging a Faulty Drawing - NEW - what do you do when you've started painting and realize your underlying drawing is flawed? Don't give up - you can FIX it!
Painting with the Amateur - Project 3 - NEW - A demonstration of using photographs.

Storage Solutions - One artist's setup for storing all the pastels and other impedimentia of the trade.
Helpful Hints - a few little tips on integrating painting into your other life.
Simple Composition Concepts - a few tips for composing your scene drawn from the ancients.
Drawing for Painters: a tool for learning perspective - here's an easy tool you can make to help yourself understand perspective.
Painting with the Amateur - Project 2 - A demonstration in trying to reproduce a book cover's art.
Painting with the Amateur - Project 1 - A demonstration in preserverence.

From this:

to this:

Canson's Mi Tientes Papers - Smooth Side or Honeycomb side? A demonstration of the different effects achieved by both sides of this versatile support.
Conte Soft Pastels - a Review
Pastels: From Hard to Soft - a subjective review of relative degrees of hardness of various brands of pastels
Framing your painting - framing pastels is slightly different from framing watercolor or oils
Oil Pastels - 'Real' pastels or crayons for adults? I've got my opinion...
Quick Tips

Tips and tricks for your Art Website: Fauxmatting - making your art look good online.