THE PASTEL MEDIUM Pastels are made from an earth powder base , its color coming from a series of pigments, which are mixed with very minimal amounts of oil, water and a gelatinous substance (which plays the role of binder). They are then agglomerated and compacted in the form of solid sticks, which are painted directly onto a support or with the help of the fingers (hence the name of dry paint).
The raw pigments are the same as those in oil
painting. Therefore the level of resistance to light is the same.
However, in pastel sticks, pigments are present in much greater
proportion than in oil and the other mediums. Hence the vitality,
freshness, rich colours characteristic of pastel - no other technique
can match them. Painting
with pastels is more like painting with
pure pigments.
Pastel paintings are perfectly
preserved. Pastel don't breaks down with
heat; although it is sensitive to light –like all other kinds of
painting materials-, its level of resistance to sun light is no lower
than oil. Pastel, of course, require protection of glass, like any other
material applied on paper or paperboard (watercolor, drawing,
printmaking, photography ...). This eventually becomes a great
advantage: the picture is protected from air dust; we will never see a
pastel blackened by air pollution and dust. Moreover, its composition
does not contain organic oils and does not undergo chemical oxidation
processes that cause a part of the blackening of other types of paint.
Neither do Pastel paintings suffer from cracking.
S o then pastel paintings retains the same freshness throughout the centuries. Madame Pompadour's monumental portrait (paint by Quentin de La Tour, the Louvre) remains, after more than two hundred fifty years, with all its richness of colour.
The
first pastels we known date from fifteenth century. Thereafter, from
Leonardo to Degas, Monet, Renoir and Picasso, artists of the past five
centuries have used the medium as a form of pictorial expression. |
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