maggiepriceart.com Blog

Unless you wear gloves, working in pastel can be a dirty business. I can’t stand the feel of gloves, and choose instead to protect my hands with a barrier cream.

There are a number of barrier creams on the market, some made specifically for artists. My personal favorite is Gloves in a Bottle (you can find out where to order it at www.glovesinabottle.com). An application lasts longer than some other brands, has no odor and seems to keep my hands cleaner.

But when I work in pastel all day for several days in a row, my hands get dry in spite of the barrier cream, probably from the repeated hand-washing. And no matter how carefully I apply the cream, after a while I have green fingernails and colorful cuticles.

The solution I’ve found is to use baby oil on my pastel-coated hands before I wash them. I rub it in thoroughly, working it around and under the fingernails. Then I wash my hands with warm water and soap. The baby oil comes off easily, and over the course of several days it seems my hands stay cleaner and are not as dry.

Understanding values-the relative darkness or lightness of a color-is a crucial element of good paintings. Organizing your pastels by value will help you see values more clearly, both in the pastel set and in photographs or nature.

If you organize your pastels by hue, such as reds in one area, blues in another, and so on, you will tend to think color before value. But if you organize your pastels by value, your selection process is different. When you need a medium light value, for example, you’ll reach for that value section and then make a color decision.

The most common value charts show 10 value steps, with value 10 being a pure white, progressing in steps to value 1, a pure black. If you have 10 sections in your pastel storage box or trays, you may use a 10-step system. However, I think six values are sufficient to clarify your selection process.

Create six divisions in your pastel box: the darkest dark, medium-dark and lightest dark, and the darkest light, medium-light and lightest light. Within each division, arrange your pastels by temperature, from cool colors on the left, for example, to warm colors on the right. Color temperature-the relative warm or cool of a hue-is second in importance only to value.

Here is a simple system for identifying values. Take a piece of good quality white drawing or pastel paper, and pick out six pastels that you think will best represent the six value steps outlined above. Make a swatch of each on the paper, so that each color touches the next. Squint at the result. If you can see a division between each, you have a separation of values. If they tend to blur together, then they are too close to the same value.

Continue to select values until you identify a progression of six distinct values. These will be the base values for rearranging your pastels. At this point you may want to use a separate piece of paper for each value. Make a swatch of the base value on each. As you pick up each stick to sort into the new arrangement, test it next to the base values. If the new color swatch and the base value appear to blend together when you squint at them, then you have the same value. If they separate, that color belongs in a different value group.

Using a six-value system means you have to make some compromises. The eye can perceive many more than six values, but it’s impractical to arrange your pastels with too many divisions. So you will have to make decisions, such as to whether a particular stick belongs more in the medium-dark category rather than the darkest dark.

This may seem like a lot of work, but the decision-making becomes easier as you gain confidence in identifying values at a glance. Maintaining the system over time will become second nature, and you’ll quickly spot a pastel out of its value section. As you learn to automatically reach for the right value and temperature as you work, your paintings will have stronger value structures with less effort.

If you’ve taken one of my workshops, you may recall that I usually begin a pastel painting with an underpainting. I apply pastel lightly to the surface (white Wallis Sanded Paper), then use a brush and Turpenoid to go over each area of color, being careful not to blend or muddy the colors. After that dries, I begin using realistic color.

My favorite underpainting technique is the one I call “brilliant color” — underpainting with large blocks of color, choosing hues that are brighter, more intense, and sometimes darker than what I see in my reference photograph.

However, I’ve also become quite interested in working with five or six values of a single hue. I choose that color based on my analysis of the photograph, and select either: the dominant color in the subject; the complement of the dominant color; the color of the light; or the complement of the color of the light.

Underpainting with several values of the same hue gives me a nice value study—a road map for the painting to follow. Like all underpainting methods, it also gives me a chance to check my composition and value structure before I’ve applied too much pastel. Correcting an error at this early stage is preferable to discovering it later!

Here’s an example of a recent painting begun this way.

Step 1: I chose several values of lavender because I felt it would help emphasize the cool yellow light, and play nicely against the green of the foliage. In the first step, I applied the pastel lightly to the surface.

Step 2: Next, I brushed each color area with Turpenoid. I dip my brush (an inexpensive, flat, synthetic brush, fairly large) in the turp, touch it to the paper towel I hold in my hand, then stroke over the pastel. Then I wipe the excess pigment off on the paper towel, and repeat the process until all the surface is covered. I try to avoid runs, and if the pigment starts to feel “pasty” I lift the excess off with the brush.

Then I step back and study my composition. I look for changes that need to be made, and if I see anything I want to revise, I do it immediately. I don’t turp it again, but proceed to paint the subject in more realistic colors, allowing bits of the underpainting to show through here and there. The resulting colors are far more lively and exciting than if I had omitted the underpainting and gone directly to the final step. (At Donatella’s Villa, 11×17, pastel © Maggie Price)