Pastels are known to be the friendly medium. No sticks, no paint no elaborate apparatus just plush, bright sticks of color. Simple enough, right? Take one and twenty to the next and end up with your elbows in a vortex of magenta dust, looking at what can only be given as a colorful catastrophe and you realize that you have made a hundred and forty decisions that has led you to this point. Welcome. This is the place they are expected to be. Find here!
Nothing is quicker than a structured course that sort of beginner takes. You see evidenced by the fact why your colors become muddy before that error is hardened into habit. Such a timely feedback is exactly what alters the course of your development.
In the majority of cases, soft pastels are used initially, and it is quite natural. They merge with the richness that borders on pulling colored velvet over the surface. What no one brings up initially, however, is the paper. Normal sketchbook papers allow the pastels to slide off with practically no traces left behind. You require texture sanded paper, special pastel boards or coarse watercolor papers. The contrast is instant, and it is truly startling to experience it in the very beginning.
The problem with beginners is that they always fall up. The dark to light order of work is instinctive and completely opposite with pastels. Dark colours are applied to the bottom, lights to the top. Invert the arrangement and your picture appears to be in open conflict with you. Any course worthy of being studied, deals with this on the very first lessons and does not proceed till it is cleared.
Blending is the art of its own and by no means like mixing paint on a palette. In this case, it is all that occurs on the surface. Soft warm transitions are made by fingertips. A tortillon provides purer edges that are more controlled. Strokes are added in layers creating textured depth but never blending. There were three different methods, three completely different results. A good course takes you through every single one step by step so that you are not making wishful decisions but informed ones.
The beginners always abuse fixative spray. The majority of them only do so at the very end, which is the worst time to do so altogether. Instead apply it between working layers. Jump over that stage and even a skety painting that has been painted with great care will run off at one hasty breath too near the surface.
Subject matter should be taken more seriously than beginners usually take it. Still life and landscape are indulgent, good-natured educators – The audacious figures and the distinct shadows have place of the imprecision. One book, one fruit, one cup made out of ceramics. These help you develop your light and value perception without making each of your sessions a test of torture.
The pastels recompense the artists who have ceased struggling with the dust, and who just lean into it. Stained knuckles, pigment-smeared noses at the end of a day work-session, that is not failure. That is the medium that works the way it is supposed to.