Using pastels for making art masterpieces has been around for many years now and is still one of the most attractive way of painting.
The compositions of the pastel colors you choose to paint your pictures have their own advantages.
The vibrant colors, closeness to reality, and the ease of use has made pastel paints the most lovable medium of all painters.
These paints have been the most versatile medium around for hundreds of years, and, even today, painters are discovering the many advantages of this medium.
Here is a look at some of the uses and advantages of pastels in the three most popular subjects of art: the still life, landscapes and portraits.
Still Life Paintings Commonplace objects, like fruits, flowers, tools, and food, would be the most popular subject of still life paintings.
The objects are portrayed usually as being laid out on a table under a single source of light.
The still life paintings are mainly a reproduction of the simple subject matter.
This type of painting brings out the observation and reproduction skills of the artist.
The illuminations of objects in all dimensions are portrayed in still life paintings.
Using pastels in the crucial shading and highlighting effects makes still life painting a lot fun and gives great practice in observing lights.
All the crucial effects of still life paintings can be represented more easily using the hatching and blending techniques of pastels.
Landscape Paintings The pioneers of art were perfect in drawing and painting landscapes.
Landscapes have long been the target of many upcoming artists.
It is a known fact that landscapes are best captured during a sunrise or sunset.
These times are a challenge for artists as the source of light is fast changing.
Using pastels in capturing landscapes on paper is the best as it makes painting easier and quicker in order to capture the best scene before the scene changes with the source of light.
Though the painting can be completed very quickly, pastels make sure that the colors of the picture are vibrant to represent entities like sky, glowing sun, and richly colored flowers and trees bathed in the sunlight.
Techniques like scumbling, glazing, and feathering that are used to represent haze, fog, water, and distant objects like mountains and trees are possible only by using pastels.
Pastel colors have all the tools and techniques that are required to create stunning pictures of beautiful landscapes.
Portrait Paintings Getting a permanent representation of people in the days before the advent of photography was through a painting.
Even though we have the best digital camera in the market today, creating portraits has been the passion and challenge for many artists.
Using pastels has the advantage of speed in finishing the portrait or at least laying down more than just the basics which allows the artist to finish at a later time.
This is also an added bonus to the sitter as the speed resolves the boredom of the person being represented, eliminating the need to stay posed for long.
The use of layering and blending techniques in representing soft and realistic skin tones is possible with these beautiful pastel colors.
These and many other features of using pastels have made it a most admirable painting medium throughout the ages!