Friday, April 4, 2014

Pastels.........


My wife has many boxes of pastels but while working on a specific work. A box lid is used to collect the ones that will be continually used in the work and left there until the painting is completed.

Pastel paintings have been around for a few hundred years.  The pigment is suspended in a dry form rather that being suspended in oil.  It has proven itself to very permanent as a painting material but it does have to be treated carefully and safely under glass.  Many oil painters like to do watercolor paintings on the side and sometimes picked up the pastel stick because of its ability to draw and paint in with a blended powder. 

My wife sells a lot of pastel paintings as the quality of a pastel has a really nice visual quality.  It creates a surface that reflects a lot of light, more than a smooth acrylic or oil painting.

People who see the real pastel rather than the image on the internet do remark that the quality is far greater in real life.  My wife completed a dog portrait recently for a woman and she said that she loved the painting so much that she thought she should adopt another dog so she would have an excuse to have her paint another one.  That is quite a complement to my wife and her work.

2 comments:

claude said...

Very beautiful ! Your wife is very talented.

Valerie said...

Interesting post, Larry. Not being an artist I don't know one product from another but it sounds as though your wife produces winners with pastel.

Balance of Strong Colors....

  The Rembrandt kind of tulips are just now starting to bloom. The colors are so vibrant.