January 29, Meet the Media workshop! Soft pastels are a beginner’s dream.  They are portable, immediate, do not require toxic additives, and clean up easily.  Pastels don’t have a cure time, so reworking is easy, without the conflict of wet paint on dry paint that plagues watercolor, oil and acrylic.   A eighty half-stick kit from Sennelier and some sanded paper are all you need to work in this medium.   Please take a look at Ann's materials list.

As a painter, pastels are one of my favorite media.  If you would like to see their full range of awesomeness, please check out Kim Fancher Lordier's site, or Wolf Kahn's marvelous book: Pastels.   Bill Cone and Duane Wakeham as well.

Pastels are luminous, sparkly, strong.  They are immediate and direct and reward a spontaneous mind.  They have a few drawbacks. They must be framed under glass, and I prefer the invisible, expensive class, otherwise the viewer spends their time looking at their own reflection.  I frame them as if they were oils, with a spacer and a standard frame, not with a mat as you would a watercolor or print.   There is also chalk dust everywhere.  I use gloves or gloves in a bottle to protect my skin, and a modern air filter to protect my lungs.  I seldom use a fixative, and if so, then only outdoors.  Various wizards are working on fixes and varnishes to eliminate the problem of glass (glassless pastels!) and the toxicity problems of varnish and fixitive. I have a non-toxic casein fixitive that I like very much.  However, most people who see my pastels ask why I did not glass them, when I did.  The tru-vue museum class does not catch reflections and hence disappears to the viewer, leaving them only looking at the artwork, rather than their own reflection.