Pastels 

Pastels

Pastel sticks or crayons consist of pure powdered pigment combined with a binder. The exact composition and characteristics of an individual pastel stick depends on the type of pastel and the type and amount of binder used. It also varies by individual manufacturer.

Dry pastels have historically used binders such as gum arabic and gum tragacanth. Methyl cellulose was introduced as a binder in the twentieth century. Often a chalk or gypsum component is present. They are available in varying degrees of hardness, the softer varieties being wrapped in paper. Some pastel brands use pumice in the binder to abrade the paper and create more tooth.

Dry pastel media can be subdivided as follows:

  • Soft pastels: This is the most widely used form of pastel. The sticks have a higher portion of pigment and less binder, resulting in brighter colors. The drawing can be readily smudged and blended, but it results in a higher proportion of dust. Finished drawings made with soft pastels require protecting, either framing under glass or spraying with a fixative to prevent smudging; hairspray also works, although caution should be taken, as fixatives may affect the color or texture of the drawing.[2] White chalk may be used as a filler in producing pale and bright hues with greater luminosity.[3]
  • Pan pastels: These are formulated with a minimum of binder in flat compacts (similar to some makeup) and applied with special Soft micropore sponge tools. No liquid is involved. A 21st-century invention, pan pastels can be used for the entire painting or in combination with soft and hard sticks.
  • Hard pastels: These have a higher portion of binder and less pigment, producing a sharp drawing material that is useful for fine details. These can be used with other pastels for drawing outlines and adding accents. Hard pastels are traditionally used to create the preliminary sketching out of a composition.[3] However, the colors are less brilliant and are available in a restricted range in contrast to soft pastels.
  • Pastel pencils: These are pencils with a pastel lead. They are useful for adding fine details.

In addition, pastels using a different approach to manufacture have been developed:

  • Oil pastels: These have a soft, buttery consistency and intense colors. They are dense and fill the grain of paper and are slightly more difficult to blend than soft pastels, but do not require a fixative. They may be spread across the work surface by thinning with turpentine.[4]
  • Water-soluble pastels: These are similar to soft pastels, but contain a water-soluble component, such as Polyethylene glycol. This allows the colors to be thinned out to an even, semi-transparent consistency using a water wash. Water-soluble pastels are made in a restricted range of hues in strong colors. They have the advantages of enabling easy blending and mixing of the hues, given their fluidity, as well as allowing a range of color tint effects depending upon the amount of water applied with a brush to the working surface.

Pastel sticks or crayons consist of pure powdered pigment combined with a binder. The exact composition and characteristics of an individual pastel stick depends on the type of pastel and the type and amount of binder used. It also varies by individual manufacturer.

Dry pastels have historically used binders such as gum arabic and gum tragacanth. Methyl cellulose was introduced as a binder in the twentieth century. Often a chalk or gypsum component is present. They are available in varying degrees of hardness, the softer varieties being wrapped in paper. Some pastel brands use pumice in the binder to abrade the paper and create more tooth.

Dry pastel media can be subdivided as follows:

  • Soft pastels: This is the most widely used form of pastel. The sticks have a higher portion of pigment and less binder, resulting in brighter colors. The drawing can be readily smudged and blended, but it results in a higher proportion of dust. Finished drawings made with soft pastels require protecting, either framing under glass or spraying with a fixative to prevent smudging; hairspray also works, although caution should be taken, as fixatives may affect the color or texture of the drawing.[2] White chalk may be used as a filler in producing pale and bright hues with greater luminosity.[3]
  • Pan pastels: These are formulated with a minimum of binder in flat compacts (similar to some makeup) and applied with special Soft micropore sponge tools. No liquid is involved. A 21st-century invention, pan pastels can be used for the entire painting or in combination with soft and hard sticks.
  • Hard pastels: These have a higher portion of binder and less pigment, producing a sharp drawing material that is useful for fine details. These can be used with other pastels for drawing outlines and adding accents. Hard pastels are traditionally used to create the preliminary sketching out of a composition.[3] However, the colors are less brilliant and are available in a restricted range in contrast to soft pastels.
  • Pastel pencils: These are pencils with a pastel lead. They are useful for adding fine details.

In addition, pastels using a different approach to manufacture have been developed:

  • Oil pastels: These have a soft, buttery consistency and intense colors. They are dense and fill the grain of paper and are slightly more difficult to blend than soft pastels, but do not require a fixative. They may be spread across the work surface by thinning with turpentine.[4]
  • Water-soluble pastels: These are similar to soft pastels, but contain a water-soluble component, such as Polyethylene glycol. This allows the colors to be thinned out to an even, semi-transparent consistency using a water wash. Water-soluble pastels are made in a restricted range of hues in strong colors. They have the advantages of enabling easy blending and mixing of the hues, given their fluidity, as well as allowing a range of color tint effects depending upon the amount of water applied with a brush to the working surface.
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Subcategories

Derwent Pastel Pencil
The beauty of fine grade pastel within a pencil,

Derwent Pastel pencils have a unique highly pigmented fine chalk texture which creates a beautiful laydown of soft colour and are easy to blend; ideal for creating detailed drawings and sketches. These pencils can be used dry or with water to create light washes, if portraiture and life studies are more your thing.

“Derwent Pastel pencils are ideal for both loose and detailed work – the soft nature of the pastel strip makes blending easy, allowing me to tackle nature’s extensive colour palette with added confidence. Being able to use the same pencil for detail ensures consistency across my artwork, and a realism which satisfies my perfectionist tendencies! In my humble opinion they are second to none for drawing wildlife in particular.”
  Martin Aveling
Jack Richeson Handmade Soft Pastels

Our Richeson Signature Pastels are appropriate for every level of creativity. They are well-made, versatile and vibrant. They are perfect for all paintings from sketching to final touches. 

Richeson Handmade Soft Pastels 

• Superior lightfastness,                                                            

professional quality

• Create broad smooth strokes  

or fine detail

• 33% larger than most pastels   

on the market

• Full-size stick: 2-3/4" x 5/8" 

Half-size stick: 1-3/8" x 5/8" 

• Perfect for velvety finish work

• Offers consistent application  

without crumbling

 

Jack Richeson Medium Soft Pastels
Jack Richeson Medium Soft Pastel
Richeson Signature Pastels are appropriate for every level of creativity. They are well-made, versatile and vibrant. They are perfect for all paintings from sketching to final touches.We are bringing you three different types of pastels to complete your selection. The soft handmade pastels offer a consistent application without crumbling as some softer pastels do. The soft round pastels help you create broad smooth strokes or fine details. The Richeson Semi-Hard Pastels are perfect for underpainting and have great flat edges for shading.Our displays can accommodate any space you have available and each hold 120 colors. They are attractive, functional and really showcase these great products. They are available for all pastels in either a Flat Shelf Unit or a Spinning Counter Unit. You have the flexibility to determine what is best for you! Jack Richeson continues to bring you the best selection of  pastels in the industry! Richeson Signature Pastels are appropriate for every level of creativity. They are well-made, versatile and vibrant. They are perfect for all paintings from sketching to final touches.  Richeson Medium-Soft Pastels.
 
• Superior lightfastness,  professional quality
• Full-size stick: 2-3/4" x 1/2" Half-size stick: 1-3/8" x 1/2"
• Perfect for the middle layers  of a painting
• Offers consistent application  without crumbling
Lefranc & Bourgeois Conte Carres Crayons

The Conté Colour carrés crayons give accurate and energetic strokes when the edges of the sticks are used, and artists can produce flat areas by using the flat of the crayon to create the values.

Lefranc & Bourgeois Conte Soft Pastel
The Conté Soft pastels is a crayon rich in pigments offering both powerful colour and accurate strockes. Holding the pastel upright or slightly inclined, you apply successive layers of colour by using the angles to obtain the maximumintensity of colour or the flat edge of pastel to obtain more softness and transparency.
In contrast to traditional pastel, soft pastel is resistant and does not snap or crumble.



HISTORY :
In 1795, Nicolas-Jacques Conté perfected the quality and manufacture of pencil leads in the colours used by the Italian artists of the 14th century. Many artists and grand masters subsequently used the Conté à Paris pastels owing to the quality of the pigments used, their lightfastness, brightness and the outstanding purity of the colours.


CHARACTERISTICS :
The soft pastels (diameter 8mm, length 70mm) and pastel crayons have a balanced range of 48 bright colours. The exceptional diameter of the Conté à Paris pastel crayon lead (5mm) gives genuine freedom of creation and has and unrivalled feel. All our pastels are produced from the finest selected pigments.



USE :
The Soft Pastel is a crayon rich in pigments offering both: powerful colour and accurate strokes, letting you structure your drawing with ease during the initial drawing phase. Holding the pastel upright or slightly inclined, you apply successive
layers of colour by using the corner to obtain the maximum intensity of colour or the flat edge of the pastel to obtain more softness and transparency.

 
In contrast to traditional pastel, soft pastel is resistant and does not snap or crumble. Be careful never to use a soft eraser with soft pastel, it will spoil your drawing with clumsy marks. 


NOTE: ONLY AVAILABLE ONLINE 
Maimeri Classico Fine Oil Pastel

Classico fine oil pastels offer depth of tone and brightness comparable to quality oil paints. Their special composition is creamy and soft enough to permit lines and colours to be drawn on surfaces of all kinds. They can be thinned as required and blended on the surface using turpentine essence or oil essence to produce highly transparent colours and unusual effects, fixed even onto porous surfaces. In addition to classic applications on paper and cardboard, these "oily" pastelsare perfect for colouring in details on prepared canvases and plaster, or smoothwood and gesso board. Of course the line produced is still the graphic, striated mark of a pastel, but it can be blended with essences to create an effect that is exactly the opposite, making this technique one of the most versatile and best-suited to contemporary tastes.Excellent for sketches and layouts, Classico fine oil pastels are available in 48 exceptionally bright and lively colours.

Maries Masters Pastel
The Masters pastel is a high quality range produced at a uniform and economical price.
The Masters pastel that adopts the latest technology produces
have the character of vivid shade, durable, innocuous, no easybreak,
bright pen body, rolling up chops and wiping,
with which you draw and write happily and fluently.
Mungyo Artist Soft Pastel

Vivid and brilliant colors - available up to 64 colors.

All techniques of the pastel can be applied easily ; Blending, Gradation, Dry-wash, etc.

Easy to draw with a smooth touch. Fade-resistant.

Made from the finest materials.

Nade ub China

PanPastel

PanPastel Colors are professional artists’ quality soft pastel colors packed in a unique pan format (cake-like). Their special qualities mean that artists can blend and apply pastel (dry) color like paint for the first time. You can use PanPastel for painting, drawing and  mixed media.

PanPastel Colors are made using a unique manufacturing process requiring minimal binder and fillers, resulting in rich, ultra soft and super-blendable colors.

Each color is loaded with the finest quality artists’ pigments for the most concentrated colors possible. The colors have all been tested for lightfastness and are fully erasable.

Compared to Soft Pastel Sticks:

PanPastel and soft pastel sticks create very different marks. Compared to sticks PanPastel Colors are semi-transparent, mixable and low dust. They are also a quicker and cleaner way to achieve more uniform coverage for large blocks of color.

Sakura Oil Pastel

Sakura Craypas Oil Pastel

Cray-Pas oil pastels with premium quality pigments, wax and oil. The motivation was to provide school children with a blend-able, smooth textured art material to help promote creativity and self-expression.

Young artists blossom with creamy, smooth color that they can smear, blend, dot, over-lap and mix. They can learn how to hold a stick to achieve different strokes – either as a pencil, clenched in a fist or on its side. Scratch and stencil art are possible in addition to working with water color over variety. Creativity and interest are enhanced with materials that encourage exploration and expression.

Cray-Pas Junior Artist Oil Pastel features:

    • Meets non-toxicity requirements
    • No use of tree-nut oils, soy, latex, wheat, oat, barley,animal oils or waxes, dairy, casein, or egg ingredients
    • Will not peel, crack or flake, and are easily blend-able
  • Oil paint effects, overlaying color, and a variety of effects can be experienced
Schmincke Exta-Soft Pastel
Brilliant colours as soft as silk and satin 
Working with Schmincke pastels leads you back to the origin of colour. Our round sticks consists only of the finest artists’ pigments (without chalk!) and a minimum amount of binder. The binder content is so small that the medium-find ground pigments only just achieve a stable bond.   

Traditionally crafted pastels 
The unusual formulation, which guarantees a unique strong colour application, also requires an equally unique production process: Traditional Craftsmanship. In this traditional and time-consuming process, screw presses are used first to shape the pre-kneaded dough into round strands, which are then removed by hand and cut into the right length in wire-strung frames. The sticks are still damp and are left to dry in the air for 8 days before they are labelled by hand.  It is not possible to produce our pastels using machines because of the particularly fine formulation - the expensive sticks could break.  The guaranteed consistency of quality and softness across all production cycles is crucial, which means that artists know that the colour will always have the same quality.   

Unlimited variety of colour 
The complete range includes 400 colour shades, divided into 75 colours which each have 5 grades: In addition to the pure colour (D), there is a black graduation (B) and 3 grades of white graduations (H, M, O). The balanced range is supplemented by a 10-step neutral grey series, 5 dark shades, gold, silver, 2 black shades, white and 5 special pearlescent shades for specific effects. This variety of colours is another sign of quality of the finest, extra-soft pastels by Schmincke.
Pastels should only be sprayed with specific fixatives  - used sparingly.
  • Each stick is handmade individually – colours that are as soft as velvet and silk 
  • Exceptionally strong colour application 
  • Best, highly concentrated artists’ pigments 
  • Minimum binder content 
  • Maximum lightfastness 
  • Unique colour mixtures and special colours  
Simbalion Pastel

Very fine particles.

Excellent for rubbing and blending. Especially bright tones. Lower adhesion. Unique square shape that works for both details and large-scale drawing. You can scratch some powder for use. Fixative recommended to be used during or after drawing for protection of your work. You can apply more colors onto the drawing after fixative is dry.  

   

(c) www.simbalion.com 
Unison Colour Handmade Soft Pastel

Unison Colour began in the early 1980’s when Artist John Hersey found that mass-produced, factory made pastels simply did not offer the qualities he was looking for, and so he decided to make his own. Today we hand make over a quarter of a million sticks a year.

THE PASTELS
Unison pastels are still made to the original recipes that were created by John Hersey. Unison Colour handmade soft pastels are highly pigmented that reveal intense colour when used.

Unison soft pastels offer vibrant or subtle shades of colour with a wonderful consistent & smooth texture that makes them ideal for pastel paintings of any subject. These soft pastels have an ability to create a range of effects & their softness lends itself to colour mixing while drawing & keeps the work fresh. The versatility of the pastel means they can be blended & used with different mediums such as oil, charcoal, pencil & watercolour. Used by both professional & amateur artists, Unison Colour soft pastels are renowned for being the best on the market.