Soft pastel techniques | Soft pastels for beginners

hey guys this is Kate and in this video I will show you different soft pastel techniques I will be using counts on mittens paper just because it's a great paper to actually practice on and it's not very expensive and I'm using it on the textured side that is the front side not the back side so let's begin the unique quality of pastels is that it is both a painting and a drawing medium first of all working with the side of the pastel crayon creates a broad painterly stroke and you can blend it or smudge it or build up in a thick impasto layers with a solid buttery appearance similar to that of an oil painting and if you work with a tip of the crayon you can make thin lines and crisp strokes that create a very pleasant and very different feel here the color and texture of the paper they play a very important role so it depends on the paper how your painting is going to look because for example I use vouloir paper and pastel matte and both of these papers are very different and very wonderful for pastels but not to get into the paper now let's talk about the different approaches to pastels themselves one of the most beautiful and expressive strokes and pastel paintings is the side stroke what I'm doing is I'm using the entire length of the side of the crayon and I'm pressing it against the paper that way I'm creating a sweeping stroke across the page depending on the pressure that you apply you can get different effects and depending again on the texture of the paper itself in this case I'm using counsel Newton's paper and it has this honeycomb texture another thing to take into consideration when using this technique is the tone of the paper itself you will still see the color of the paper showing through if you do not blend your pastels depending on the mood that you want to give to your painting and depending on the subject you can create an atmosphere already starting with the color of your paper this is the best technique for covering large areas and it's very easy to cover for example a background or sky using side strokes you can also blend the pastel with your finger or with a range of different blending tools we will talk about them a bit later and it's going to create a different effect it's going to cover the texture of the paper and you can layer also other colors on top as I did this case blue and yellow the next technique again we're going to be using our pastels on the side and I am creating a kind of a checkered board with my pastel with the colors I'm trying not to cover the whole area like I did with the side stroke but I'm leaving some gaps in between the color areas and then with another color I am adding more to the spaces in between the first color I am trying to also dry the color a bit into the blue with my yellow trying to drag it into the blue that way the colors mix a bit and it creates a lively effect so this is going to enliven the painting because sometimes a solid color can look quite dull and with this technique you can add a bit of a sparkle to your painting the next technique is a linear stroke this involves simply using your pastel with its step depending on the softness of the pastel you will create a broader or more thin line if you're using a harder pastel the kind of that come in square shapes usually it will create a thinner line also pastel pencils are good for this and if you are using a very soft pastel it's going to create a broader line just because of the fact that it's too soft this technique is very similar to drawing and a good way to make your painting come alive is creating gestural strokes you can always snap your harder pastels in two and this will create a sharper edge of the pastel and allow you to create those finer lines if your pastels got to blunt otherwise you can use sandpaper block and sharpen your pastels on it although I do not like this technique particularly because it's just wastes too much pastel that goes into dust again you can leave these strokes as they are or you can blend them in this case I used my finger to blend them even though that it's a smooth gradation there are still these lines that are kind of showing through and this way the painting that if you're using this technique will not look dull it's going to be livelier the next technique that I'm using is called hatching or cross hatching so basically you use your pastel with the tip and you're creating lines that go diagonally or horizontally or vertically whichever direction that you want them to go and hatching is just creating lines that go in one direction and cross hatching is creating lines that go burp in particular or at an angle to these lines depending on the subject that you are creating you can use this technique for different textures again you can blend them in with your finger or with blending tools to create different effects and different appearances and you can layer other colors on top that way you will create again more interesting appearance of the surface that you are working on you also using cross hatching and hatching you can create different textures for example if you use shorter strokes that go in different directions to each other you can create for example a texture of a basket weave or something similar and again using different colors to just achieve different effects of how it looks you this next technique is called dusting what I'm doing is I'm scraping my pastel with my fingernail and the dust that comes off the pastel falls onto the paper and then I can blend it with my finger just to make it stick to the surface of the paper otherwise if I would like to keep these specks of color on the paper without blending them I would need something like document sleeve to put on top of them and rub them in so basically this way I am NOT smudging the color but still the color settles into the tooth of the paper and stays there this is a very great technique if you want to paint for example seascapes for waves for splashing water or snow the next technique is called scumbling so scumbling basically you create these strokes that come in different directions or even create doodles with the tip of your pastel in a way that you do not cover completely the whole surface of the paper then with another color you can go over the top to create more livelier appearance of that area a lively art color this way you can see that I'm using a blue and the yellow that kind of mix together but at the same time I can still see clearly the each color on their own depending on which color is on cert on the surface the top layer your colors are going to look different so in the first case I used blue underneath and in the second one blue is on top so you can see it looks slightly different in the first case it looks more greenish yellow and in the second one it looks more blue next technique it's very similar to that of hatching it's called feathering so feathering it works very similar in a way of hatching as I said but in this case all the strokes in the painting go in the same direction you alternate between colors and that way you bring out the shape of an object so I outline my orb just to know where to add my yellows and where to add my blues and I am making all the strokes in the same direction that go diagonally from bottom left to top right corner and that way you can create shape any shape even figures or animals whatever comes to your mind and it's going to already make the form stand out next is pointillism it's very simple all you do is take your pastel and with the tip you create these little dots on the paper then you can add another color in between and it's going to give that impressionist tech look to your paintings and again your colors will look a lot more livelier than if just simply blend it together next I want to show you how to erase pastel so there are two ways that you can use and one of them is a kneaded eraser this is a Windsor Newton kneaded eraser and what I'm doing this is a new eraser so I need to knead it a bit and make it pliable and I can create different shapes with this eraser it's very good for all the drawing media but with pastels most importantly is that you remember do not rub too much so if you rub pastels you are risking of smudging it too much and muddying up the colors and you have to remember that it's never going to lift out all the color completely but that's not a problem because with pastels you can still go over the areas that you are working on and you can correct all the mistakes so it's a very good medium for the beginners the next technique to correct and to take away the pigment off the paper is a brush this is a stiff bristle brush and I cut its end off and what I'm doing is I'm scraping off the pastel again depending on the fact if I have rubbed the pastel into the tooth of the paper or not it's going to lift more or less of the pastel and then you just get rid of the by topping the paper off next I want to show you blending tools these are the blending tools that I use except for my fingers and the first one is a paper stump and you can see that on different papers it works differently I found that paper stumps work perfectly well on pestle mat but on cancel mittens they lift a lot of color off then again the color shapers they are not very good on pastel mat I do not like them personally maybe you do but on cancel mid-tones they work very well for blending so experiment with different ways to blend the pastel and you can also use q-tips or sponges and all the different ways that you can imagine all the different tools you can imagine to blend the pastel and each one will give a different effect so most importantly experiment and the last technique that I wanted to show you is the wet under painting so this is a more advanced technique when I started out with pastels I did not use it but it's a very great way to actually block in and cover areas of your painting so the first thing I do is I use water and this is just clean water that I dipped my brush in and I am passing over the area where I have my color on the paper again here you have to be careful you have to have a paper that is going to withstand the wet treatment I know that mittens can handle some wet treatment but it can buckle so be careful with that if you covered the whole paper with water and passed on that it is very good for wet under painting techniques Cinelli a pastel card it's another sanded surface but it does not stand any liquid on it at all so do not ruin the paper be careful with using what underpaintings just find out about the paper that you are intending to use and if you can use water or alcohol in it and then I'm using also alcohol on another patch here on the blue and this is just vodka I bought in the store because I didn't have any alcohol handy and basically does the same thing at the cells passed down one advantage of alcohol is that it dries faster than water and you will see that the appearance is slightly slightly different but as this technique is used for underpainting it doesn't matter that much at least to me so I can use a weddin wet endure painting with water or with alcohol depending on what I have handy at that moment this way you do not risk of lifting or mudding your colors so this is the list of all techniques that I use in my paintings and that I know and I hope you found it insightful and maybe you know some more techniques I would like to hear about them in comments if you have any questions as well ask them in comments below I will be very happy to answer and for now I guess this is it I just wanted to say thank you for watching and if you did like this video click that like button underneath and don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos and tutorials I will be posting them every week and I will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Jekaterina Kotelnikova

Views: 325,656

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Id: kTKUtZgxANc

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 06 2018