Pastel

There are three types of pastels - “dry”, oily and wax. Oil pastels are made from pigment with linseed oil by pressing. Similarly, “dry” pastels are made, except that no oil is used. The basis of kneading wax pastels is made up of the highest quality wax and pigments. Oil pastel is considered educational material, while its dry counterpart is used both for educational purposes and for purely artistic purposes. Also, oil pastels are often used as a material for sketches and sketches, as they blend well and give a soft line. However, this application of this technique is not suitable on all paper and requires for the most part special rough paper, as well as further fixing the pattern with varnish to avoid prints. In the technique of “dry” pastels, the technique of “shading” is widely used, which gives the effect of soft transitions and soft colors.

There are two main types of dry pastels: hard and soft. Soft pastels consist mainly of pure pigment, with a small amount of binder. Suitable for wide saturated strokes. Hard pastels are less likely to break, as they contain a larger amount of binder. And they are great for drawing, because the side of the stick can be used for tone, and the tip for fine lines and elaboration of details.

To paint with pastel, you need a textured surface that will hold the pigment. Pastel drawings are usually done on colored paper. The tone of the paper is selected individually, taking into account the tasks of the drawing. White paper makes it difficult to assess the saturation of the main colors, although in a number of works for certain tasks it is appropriate and also available for the artist. In “dry” pastels, artists also use the technique, when with a thin overlay of a layer of pastel, colored or white paper appears through strokes or shading and gives a “light from the inside”. Such a technique can be found in landscapes and portraits .

There are three types of pastel paper: sandpaper - designed for artwork, sold in large format sheets or by gluing album; pastel board - made of tiny particles of cork; velvet paper - has a velvety surface. Velvet paper allows you to use a minimum amount of fixer. Also, such paper is the most popular because of the large selection of both color and size of a single sheet. You can use paper for watercolor, if necessary, tinting it with tea or coffee. On sale there is a special paper for pastels with different textures for certain tasks. Each such paper has its own degree of roughness and grain location in the paper. The type of final work will depend on the choice of paper; on solid, smooth paper, pastel will not work. When rubbing the chalk on the paper, the pigment should fall into the slot (the space between the grains), so the pastel acquires depth and its individual velvetiness, for which this material is valued.

Corrections are usually made in the early stages of a drawing. Since pastel is not the most covering material possible, the pattern for it should be light so that the stroke from the pastel could block the line of the pencil. In frequent cases, the preliminary drawing is done either with the pastel crayon itself, very similar to the color of the paper, or very light in tone, or a fairly hard pencil (HB - H4 and beyond). If the pencil is not hard enough, then with further pastel coating on paper it will mix with the pencil and give “dirt” (unclean color), which is not permissible in the pastel technique. To remove a large amount of color, use wide bristle brushes. At the same time, the tablet with the drawing must be held vertically, this will allow excess particles to fall down and not rub into the paper. An eraser or a slice of bread is also used (white - without baking). But this method is not applicable when working on sandpaper and velvet paper. A razor blade can scrape off delicate strokes.

To protect the pastel pattern from smearing and shedding, it must be fixed. For this, a regular hair spray or a special fixer is suitable. A pair of light sprayings will suffice. The fixed pattern slightly loses its pastel, the colors become deeper.

To create hard and soft pastels, pigments are ground into a paste with water and a binder, and then twisted or pressed into sticks. Most brands produce gradations of color, like the original pigment, which tends to be dark, from pure pigment to almost white, mixing various amounts of chalk. This mixing of pigments with chalk is the source of the word “pastel” in relation to “pale color” (tones). Pastel work is written by moving the sticks on an abrasive surface, leaving the color on paper, sand, canvas, etc. When the canvas is completely covered with pastel, the work is called pastel; when not, pastel sketch or drawing. Pastel drawings made using a medium that has the highest pigment concentration reflect light without darkening refraction, providing very saturated colors.

Pastels can be used to create a permanent work of art if the artist meets relevant archival considerations. It means:

• Only pastels with lightfast pigments are used. Since it is not protected by a binder, the pigment in pastels is especially vulnerable to light. Pastel paintings made using pigments that change color or tone when exposed to light experience comparable problems with gouache paintings using the same pigments.
• The work is carried out on the basis of acid-free archival quality support. Historically, some work has been done on substrates that are now extremely fragile, and it is necessary to protect the substrate, not the pigment, under glass and away from light.
• Works are correctly mounted and framed under glass so that the glass does not touch a work of art. This prevents environmental degradation such as air quality, humidity, mold problems associated with condensation and pollution.
• Some artists protect their finished products by spraying them with a retainer . Pastel fixative is an aerosol varnish that can be used to stabilize fine coal or pastel particles in a picture or drawing. This cannot prevent smudging completely without dulling or dimming the bright and fresh colors of the pastel. It is also toxic, and therefore requires careful use.

The use of hair spray as a fixative is generally not recommended, as it is not acid-free and, therefore, can degrade artwork in the long term. Conventional retainers fade over time. In addition, hair spray as a fixative is undesirable, because when sprayed, the work surface loses its texture, which will no longer be possible to fix. For these reasons, some artists avoid using a fixative, unless the pastel is so overloaded that the surface no longer holds the pigment. The latch will restore the "tooth", and on top you can apply more pastel. Abrasive bearings eliminate or minimize the need to use an additional retainer in this way. SpectraFix, a modern casein fixative , pre-mixed in a bottle for a pump pump or used as a concentrate for mixing with alcohol, is non-toxic, does not darken and does not fade in pastel layers. However, SpectraFix requires some practice in order not to use too much of this fixative and not to leave an excess of liquid that can dissolve previously applied paint layers. In addition, it takes a little longer to dry each layer than conventional fixative sprays. During storage and transportation, special paper is used to protect pastels - glassine . When publishing expensive albums, glass pages are inserted between separate sheets of pastels.

Pastel methods can be difficult because the medium mixes and mixes directly on the work surface, and, unlike paint, colors cannot be checked on the palette before application to the surface. Pastel errors cannot be covered in a way that a paint error can be painted over (corrected). Experimenting with a pastel medium on a small scale to learn different techniques gives the user better control over a larger composition. The pastel has some common techniques with painting, such as blending, masking, creating color layers, adding accents and highlighting, as well as shading. Some methods are characteristic both for pastels and for creating sketches, such as coal and lead, for example, hatching and hatching, gradation. Other techniques are characteristic of a pastel medium. Color base: using a colored work surface to produce an effect, such as softening pastel shades or contrast Dry Wash: covering a large area using the wide side of a pastel stick. A cotton ball, paper towel or brush can be used for finer and more even distribution of pigment. Erasing: removing pigment from the area using a kneaded eraser or other tool, a pastel pen applied thick enough to create a noticeable texture or relief. The pastel resists techniques: Curettage, glaze , sfumato , Sgraffito , grit. Textured substrates: using coarse or smooth paper textures to create an effect, a technique often used in watercolor painting. Wet cleaning.

The pastel got its name from the word “a pastelo”, which was used to call the drawing technique both black Italian pencil and red sanguine , sometimes tinted with other colored pencils, used by Italian artists of the 16th century, including Leonardo da Vinci . In the XVIII century, pastel became an independent technique and gained special popularity in France, where it was used by such famous artists as Francois Boucher , Maurice Cantin de Latour , Chardin , later Greuze , Jean Etienne Lyotard , Jean Hubert , Delacroix , as well as in England ( Francis Cots not only worked in this technique, but also improved the technology for the production of paints). An outstanding pastelist was the Italian artist Rosalba Carriere . Among her students is the largest pastelist of Sweden, Gustaf Lundberg . Then came the period when pastels were forgotten, and interest in it was again awakened only in the second half of the 19th century.

Some leading impressionist painters willingly used pastel, appreciating it for the freshness of the tone and speed with which it allowed them to work. Degas’s manner, for example, was remarkable for its freedom; he applied pastel with bold, broken strokes, sometimes leaving a tone of paper protruding through the pastel or adding strokes with oil or watercolors. One of the artist's discoveries was steam painting, after which the pastel softened and it could be shaded with a brush or fingers. Degas not only used the pastel technique in a new way, but also created with its help paintings that are superior in size to the works of other artists made by pastel. Sometimes he sewed together several sheets for this to get the surface of the size he needed.

In Russia, pastel appeared in the first half of the 18th century, brought by foreign artists. Throughout the XVIII century, the creators of works in this technique were the masters of the so-called Rossiki - foreign painters who worked in Russia. They performed, almost exclusively, portraits to order. The spread among Russian artists pastel technique received a little later. Fast in production, often performed in one session, a pastel portrait was widely used, it became one of the most beloved types of custom-made images, performing in some way the function of a photograph. The heyday of the pastel portrait in Russia falls on the first third of the XIX century. This is apparently due to the rise of the estate culture, with family portrait galleries that have become fashionable. The leading master of this time is Karl-Wilhelm (Karl Ivanovich) Bardou, a Berliner native, who became famous primarily as the author of pastel portraits. Since 1806, Bardou Jr. lived in Moscow, where he performed many portraits of family members of the Moscow nobility. On one of them - "Portrait of a Young Man" (1811) - the famous Russian poet of the Pushkin circle, E. A. Baratynsky , was captured.

Along with other graphic and pictorial techniques, pastel was used by Alexander Orlovsky , a painter, draftsman, engraver and lithographer who studied in Europe and possesses a “quick pencil” (as A. Pushkin put it ). The first decades of his career were actively worked by pastel and Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov . In 1807, Venetsianov entered the public service, and in his free time he went to the Hermitage and pastel pencils copied paintings by Luca Giordano and Bartolome Esteban Murillo . Later Venetsianov presented two genre peasant portraits to Empress Elizabeth Alekseyevna with pastels, for which he received a diamond ring, and in 1823 he presented “a rural home-made painting with pastel colors” to Alexander I. Apparently, this was one of the masterpieces of the famous painter, now owned by the Russian Museum - “Beet Cleansing”.

From the 1840s, the mastery of daguerreotype came to Russia from Europe, and in the late 1840s, a way of duplicating photographic images appeared. The impressive novation temporarily replaced the watercolor, miniature and pastel portraits from the art market; therefore, in Russia in the 1840s and 1860s, pastel was extremely rare. The middle of the 19th century was marked by isolated works in the pastel technique, the authors of which were Sergey Konstantinovich Zaryanko , Natalya Egorovna Makukhina (“Portrait of the Artist Kovrigin ”), Pyotr Alekseevich Olenin (“Portrait of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov ”), Pavel Petrovich Sokolov , Johann-Adolf Timm. Used pastel and Konstantin Makovsky ("Bacchanal". 1860).

In the 1890s, pastel technology in Russia is actually experiencing a rebirth. Almost all pastels of Isaac Ilyich Levitan date back to the 1890s. Prior to that, Levitan did not turn to this technique at all, and subsequently - after 1894 - only in isolated cases. The collection of the Russian Museum contains three master pastels: Gloomy Day (1895), River Valley (1890s) and one of the peaks of Levitan's work, Meadow at the Edge of the Forest (1898). The pastel occupied a special place in the work of Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov ("Portrait of Princess Musina-Pushkina", 1895). For "Portrait of Elena Pavlovna Olive" (1909), pastel alone was not enough, and with it the artist used watercolor and gouache. In the pastel works of Boris Kustodiev (“In the box”; “Blossoming Wisteria”, 1912) - the interweaving of trends in Russian art of the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, interest in theater, the world of backstage (“Dancer in a cabaret”, 1904; “Circus”, 1905; “In the Box”, 1912), the presence of a light nostalgic note on the national past (“Children in Fancy Dress”, 1909). The plastic possibilities of the pastel allowed the artist Leonid Pasternak to convey the atmosphere of Leo Tolstoy’s house (“Leo Tolstoy with his family in Yasnaya Polyana”, 1902).

Pastel is becoming a favorite technique of the members of the Art World art association - Alexander Nikolayevich Benois , Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev, Konstantin Andreyevich Somov , Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky , Leonid Osipovich Pasternak and others. This technique was all the more in demand, the less practitioners of academism or late mobility practiced it. Artists expand the genre arsenal of pastels. For example, pastel landscapes predominate with Alexander Benois, Sergey Malyutin with lyrical portraits, Leon Bakst with landscape portraits, images of children and a poster (poster for the Children's Bazaar, 1899), and Alexander Golovin with sketches of theatrical scenery.

For Zinaida Serebryakova (“Portrait of the Son of Alexander”, 1921), pastel remained a favorite technique until the end of days. In the manner of "non finito" ("incompleteness") portraits of children were created, with a thinly worked face and barely outlined clothes, as well as a "ballet series", where the figures are only outlined in a blurry outline. The Moroccan Series (1928, 1932) is entirely made in pastel.

Working with soft pastel sticks requires a rough, fleecy base that can hold the colorful powder. In the old days, artists painted even on suede. Currently, the basis for pastels is most often used special paper, rough cardboard or canvas glued to cardboard. Some artists prepare the foundation themselves. Pastels can be drawn and written. Sometimes the artist conveys the form mainly by a line, stroke, contour, and the entire color scheme is carried out as a tint, in just a few tones. It turns a tinted drawing.

But you can create pastel and real painting, conveying the whole complex range of color relationships of nature. Degas said that pastel allows him to become a "colorist with a line." In this case, the artist can achieve color sounding with multicolor small strokes. These strokes can be mixed by rubbing with a finger, shading, or with a dry brush, but you can leave it in its pure form, like a mosaic.

The pastel is compressed less than chalk, and therefore lies on paper with a higher color density and forms velvety strokes with soft, friable edges. The pastel is on the verge between drawing and painting. It combines line and color: you can draw and write with it, work with hatching, painting a spot, with a dry or wet brush. The peculiarity of the pastel is that with a minimum of binder, the coloring mass represents individual pigment particles, reflecting from which the light is scattered in different directions, giving the colorful layer a special radiance, velvety, specific “pastel” softness.

The pastel can give a very rich and very weak tone, but it has a big drawback: the layer of pastel applied to the surface is extremely short-lived and can be destroyed at the slightest touch. In order to avoid this, the surface is treated with a special composition that protects the pattern, but the colors darken noticeably. Artists were constantly worried about the problem of the safety of works, which became the topic of many scholarly treatises. Various fixatives were invented , but even the most advanced of them changed the initial tone of the pastel, distorted its color scheme, ruined its natural velvetiness. The most reliable pastel preservation is in a good edging under the glass. In this case, a pastel work can live without losing its charm, centuries. An example of this is the famous "Chocolate Girl" from the Dresden Gallery. The picture, which amazes the audience with the freshness and purity of colors, seems just finished, although it was created in the XVIII century. Thus, it is best to just use frames with glass and a mat - a border made of thick cardboard, so that even the glass does not touch the work. But the pastel also has technical advantages. The pastel does not fade in the sun, does not darken and does not crack, is not afraid of temperature changes. New technologies for the production of pastel paints, tinted papers and abrasive canvases, modern edging of unique graphics have prepared the basis for a new heyday and the widespread dissemination of pastel art among artists and among art lovers.

The pastel attracts masters of painting with nobleness, purity and freshness of color, velvety surface of texture, liveliness and exciting vibration of the stroke. The subtlety and grace of pastel technique, combined with the unusual sonority of colors and the richness of texture create a world that captivates the viewer with a sense of immediacy of creativity. If the artist works carelessly in the pastel, all its virtues disappear. Oil paints allow you to repeatedly rewrite, clean, apply many layers; pastel, on the other hand, requires accuracy, an intuitive “intuition” in relation to the chosen color, because after that it is already impossible to change it most often: pure, the same famous “flickering” pastel tone is only like this with the original application. At the same time, pastel mixes and blends colors in an amazing way. The best pastels are many colorful layers; pure, but translucent "through." Hence the velvety and invariably attractive depth.

Work in the pastel technique involves shading the pigment or “driving” it into the base - so that several strokes or spots applied side by side join and “play” with color, not mixing completely. This is best achieved with your fingertips - no other material and tool can be compared with them. The artist’s proximity to his creation, their “touch” communicates the depth and subtlety of what is happening.

The pastel, of course, requires very good lighting - then the infinity of colors appears, the game is translucent multilayer. Best of all is daylight, but diffused, falling along a tangent. Under different lighting conditions, the picture will produce a completely different impression. A new beam or a different angle of view - and you will see new colors and details. It attracts and fascinates. With decent lighting, the pastel comes to life.

• Malinovsky K.V. History of collecting paintings in St. Petersburg in the XVIII century. - SPb. : Publishing house "Kriga", 2012. - S. 536. - ISBN 978-5-901805-49-7 .