Pastel Perspectives

There are many varieties of soft pastels.

Different brands have different attributes and qualities, including soft buttery textures, intense pure colours or wonderfully muted tones. We all have our favourites. Just as our work and styles are all different, the features we admire in a pastel will also vary.

Most pastellists have a variety of different brands in their collection. For the beginner, deciding on which pastels you want can be pretty daunting. It’s good to have a variety of tones and colours available, as pastel is not so easily mixed.

Colour

Where do you start? A good basic set is a starting point, I often recommend ½ stick sets as you get twice the colours for your money. From there you can add colours as you need them. Unfortunately, many starter sets contain bright, pretty colours that look good, but aren’t actually very useful. Look at any experienced pastellist’s pastel box, and you will soon realise the useful colours aren’t necessarily the “pretty” ones. More commonly, the most used pastels are the muted colours that best highlight or balance a touch of brighter colour.