On my holiday breaks I like to take time out to draw and do my own work. This is what i have worked on this time. I decided to refresh my memory of Chalk pastels as I haven't used them for nearly 10 years and I am planning to do a new project with my Grade 11s using this medium.
Chalk Pastel is a lovely medium to work in. it can both be gestural and perceptual, depending on your style of drawing. It is often considered a painting medium, even though you are drawing as the nature of the medium blends like paint.
The trick to using this medium is, like with most mediums, buying a quality pastel. I have worked with "al-cheapos" and their discrepancy in quality almost makes them pointless to work with. For this task I worked with Marie's Soft Pastels.
When working with pastel you want to build up layors of colour. Start with darks and build up to lights- which tend to blend better. Pastels are great for mark-making and you can if you keep a sharp edge to your pastel create fine lines to work with. They also blend well, but be careful when smudging as too much of this can flatten an image.
It is important to keep your work covered while working on other areas, as this medium tends to smudge very easily, you will find that as you drag your hand over the surface it does tend to smudge. that is why i think its best to keep it covered.
once you have completed the piece it is best to spray it with a fixative. There are various ones that you can buy from art shops but it is just as effective to use hair spray. This will prevent smudging to a degree and "fix" the chalk on to your page. I leave this until the end but you can do it as you go. Just remember that once you have sprayed you cant erase.
Here are some progress images of this work...
Chalk Pastel is a lovely medium to work in. it can both be gestural and perceptual, depending on your style of drawing. It is often considered a painting medium, even though you are drawing as the nature of the medium blends like paint.
The trick to using this medium is, like with most mediums, buying a quality pastel. I have worked with "al-cheapos" and their discrepancy in quality almost makes them pointless to work with. For this task I worked with Marie's Soft Pastels.
When working with pastel you want to build up layors of colour. Start with darks and build up to lights- which tend to blend better. Pastels are great for mark-making and you can if you keep a sharp edge to your pastel create fine lines to work with. They also blend well, but be careful when smudging as too much of this can flatten an image.
It is important to keep your work covered while working on other areas, as this medium tends to smudge very easily, you will find that as you drag your hand over the surface it does tend to smudge. that is why i think its best to keep it covered.
once you have completed the piece it is best to spray it with a fixative. There are various ones that you can buy from art shops but it is just as effective to use hair spray. This will prevent smudging to a degree and "fix" the chalk on to your page. I leave this until the end but you can do it as you go. Just remember that once you have sprayed you cant erase.
Here are some progress images of this work...