Maggie Price - Painting with Pastels: Easy Techniques to Master the Medium

Petals in the Stream
11" 14" (28cm 36cm)

painting with

pastels

Easy Techniques to Master the Medium

Maggie Price

Founding Editor of The Pastel Journal

www.artistsnetwork.com

Painting with Pastels. Copyright 2007 by Maggie Price. Manufactured in China. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by North Light Books, an imprint of F+W Publications, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45236. (800) 289-0963. First Edition.

Other fine North Light Books are available from your local bookstore, art supply store or direct from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Price, Maggie
Painting with pastels : easy techniques to master the medium / Maggie Price. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58180-819-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60061-611-2 (EPUB)
ISBN-10: 1-58180-819-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
eISBN: 978-1-44031-743-9

1. Pastel drawing--Technique. I. Title.
NC880.P75 2007
741.235--dc22
2006029048

Edited by Erin Nevius and Jason Feldmann
Designed by Guy Kelly
Production art by Kathy Bergstrom
Production coordinated by Matt Wagner

about the author

Maggie Price is the co-founder, former editor and current contributor of ThePastel Journal; she has written numerous articles for it and other magazines. She studied fine arts at the University of Missouri and has attended many workshops with well-known artists, such as Albert Handell, Elizabeth Mowry, Eric Michaels and Deborah Christensen Secor. She currently conducts her own workshops on pastel painting in the United States and other countries and is an active member in numerous art societies. Her work can be seen at www.maggiepriceart.com.

Contributing Artists

Deborah Bays

Greg Biolchini

Thomas DeCleene

Sam Goodsell

Bill Hosner

Richard McKinley

Desmond O'Hagan

Deborah Christensen Secor

Ruth Summer

metric conversion chart

acknowledgments
No artist exists in a vacuum. I have learned from every painting Ive ever studied in a gallery or museum, from every instructor, and from every artist Ive interviewed or read about. I am grateful to all those artists for the opportunity to learn and committed to my mission to pass that knowledge on to others.

Many thanks to the artists who contributed to this book and generously shared their expertise. It is an honor to have their paintings and demonstrations included, and I am very grateful to each of them.

Special thanks to North Light Editorial Director Jamie Markle, who not only guided me through the first phases of the book outline but made substantial suggestions for improvement. And to Erin Nevius and Jason Feldmann, my editors, for their support and great ideas. It has been a delight to work with all of these fine editors.

I also want to thank the readers of The PastelJournal magazine, whose response to my articles over the years made me believe I could write this book, and all those who have taken my workshops, who helped me learn to teach.

Montecatini Alto
11" 14" (28cm 36cm)

dedication
Dedicated to my husband, Bill Canright, with thanks for his support and encouragement, as well as his photographic and artistic expertise.

table of contents

CHAPTER ONE
what youll need to begin

CHAPTER TWO
composition and color

CHAPTER THREE
putting pastel to paper

CHAPTER FOUR
painting from photographs

CHAPTER FIVE
painting from life

View from Piazza Garibaldi
8" 11" (20cm 28cm)

introduction

Still Waters
11" 17" (28cm 43cm)

Painting with pastel is the most direct way of applying color to a surface. Pastels are made of the same pigments as oil paint and watercolors, but the pure color is only mixed with enough binder to hold it in stick form. Rather than brushing on a liquid mixture and waiting for it to dry, and possibly change colors, the artist working with pastel applies the dry pigment directly to the surface.

It is this immediacy of application that makes the medium so enticing. Open a box of pastels, and the brilliant array of colors tempts you to pick up a stick and make a mark. Once begun, the visual rewards are so great that its almost impossible to stop.

Like many artists, I moved from my childhood love of drawing and coloring with crayons to painting with oils. It was many years later that I discovered pastels. It seemed to me that paintings in pastel had an unusual luminosity and brilliance, a special quality of color Id never been able to achieve in oils. I bought a set of pastels and began learning how to use them, and Ive never let them go.

What I loved then and still love about pastels is that you can use them to draw as you would with a crayon or pencil, and you can stroke with the side of the pastel as you would with a brush. The color of the pastel is the color it will be on the paperbut layering, blending, glazing and many other techniques were about to explore offer a world of possibilities in the use of the color.

People often ask why I say I paint with pastels rather than draw with them. You can certainly draw with them, and painters as far back as Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) have done so, using one or more sticks of pastel and drawing as one would with a pencil. Drawing is a matter of line, however, while painting deals more with shapes, masses and color. When you use pastels in this way and cover the surface with pigment, the result is a painting.