12 Soft Pastel Techniques for Every Artist PLUS Painting Demo

hello and welcome to monet cafe i'm artist susan jenkins we're gonna have some fun today and if you're new here please subscribe and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos think you guys are going to be excited about this video where am providing 12 soft pastel techniques and lot more even create this little painting at the end so stay tuned am so happy to know that monet cafe here on youtube has inspired many artists to come over to the medium of soft pastels but because it's little different than other mediums we often get confused about mark making how to use it how's it different from other mediums so i'm going to take you through this tutorial and show you this is some black paper that i'll be doing some mark making on and i'm just showing you here some of the little quick call them pastel sketches that i've done actually just on unsanded black canson paper and because soft pastel is different from other mediums in that we don't use brush we use our hands and these earthen vessels we get to hold it's very important to know the different marks that we can make to achieve different effects and results here's another painting you can see various stroke work and i've used multiple techniques that you will see in this video to achieve the different and painterly results so let's get ready to learn more about pastel techniques and encourage you to follow along with me i'm going to show you right now how to prepare your own surface with the 12 different divisions for these techniques as you can see at the beginning of this video i'm using pad of black canson paper i'm using posca acrylic marker love these markers they come in black and white they may come in other colors too but thought this black canson paper would be dynamic and easy way for you to see these pastel techniques so basically use whatever you have divide your paper into 12 equal portions and label it accordingly now i'm lefty and when don't paint this way but when write do the typical curve my hand over like that so you'll be able to see this i'm just speeding this up literally to write these in and i'm going to demonstrate each one of these right now the first technique is blending and it is one that is quite common to pastel painting and the neat thing about blending is that you actually can get interesting combinations with color lot of people think that because pastels are dry medium that we can't get mixing of colors like with wet mediums but we actually can get some effects of mixing color that you will see in just minute like magic all right so have my blue these are harder new pastels just so you know and again canson is an unsanded paper but watch what happens when just use pastels to blend themselves here over the blue do you see how that turned little bit to green so we do have the ability to get little bit of color mixing with pastels and you'll see more of this with some of the other techniques now keep in mind with blending sometimes the end result is affected by which color you put down first for example if put my blue pastel down first it's kind of teal pastel and then the yellow on top of it now because these are harder pastels they kind of blend themselves harder pastels have tendency to do that but now notice put the yellow down first and then the blue and noticed in my example it's not as extreme it would be more extreme if had rubbed the beneath layer with my finger little bit more you would have seen more of dramatic difference between the two now i'll do one more example here where i'm going to show you some of the different tools that you can use for blending you see how you can actually use pastels to blend themselves but you can also use other tools to do the blending for you in this case i'm putting down the yellow and the teal color and then will blend using three different methods the first method is simply using your finger the next method i'll demonstrate will be with piece of pipe foam insulation that you can get at any hardware store it's really neat blending tool and also i've been lately using piece of chamois cloth i'll go more into when to use that when not to all right so let's just use the finger technique it does work great but keep in mind some people say they rub their finger raw have callous fingers from playing guitar so it doesn't bother me that much but you do get kind of different effects with each one even though it doesn't show up quite as much on this canson paper that's the pipe foam insulation and then last is the chamois cloth now the shammy cloth works better on papers that aren't overly sanded and again i'll describe more about that later all right the next example is going to be broken color happen to really like this one think it's because really like the illusion of color mixing so in this example we're not blending the colors as we did in the first one but this technique will give an illusion of new color by the close proximity of the marks next to each other now you see i'm just making kind of small random marks first in the teal and then in the yellow and i'm going to go in with the opposite color for each one and you'll see how the technique does give it an illusion of almost green now the pastel does go over some of the blue you don't have to be so specific and get it right in the spaces that you've created but think this technique gives painterly and energetic style and definitely different end result than just blending the two colors together use this technique lot in painting and just don't always have to have the marks so specific like this but just gestural little lines of color next to each other will create this dynamic and fun result broken color is also similar technique that use often when painting skies rather than just doing blended sky as in the first example like to use colors of similar value and the same strategy as broken color to create more interesting sky and the way this is done is notice in this example i'm not making my marks as small or specific just lay down some color with various gestural strokes and then lay down another color on top of it amongst it in and around it that's of similar value value just means lightness or darkness of color and it creates more interesting color rather than just using your finger or blending the two colors together now the next technique is hatching and cross hatching this is technique that's often used in drawing if you've done any drawing you've probably used this technique to get various methods of shading and the neat thing about pastels is it works as drawing and painting medium so this is the hatching example just did but you can also do it with little marks that are kind of turned in different ways little hatching marks and you just kind of vary their direction to create little pattern of sorts now cross hatching is just what it sounds like we're going to do the same little hatching marks and by the way always recommend to practice these things you get better and more consistent at your lines being consistent which mine were not so consistent was working around my camera if you guys could see my setup sometimes when do these demos it's crazy so decided to use different color to do the cross hatching just so you could still get that illusion of mixed color now the next technique is called feathering and really like this technique if you've ever seen artwork where it's painting and it looks like every line is kind of going in the same direction that's one way you can do feathering i'm going to show you that here i'm basically just making lot of lines all going diagonally from top to bottom from the right to the left and i'm going to kind of create little painting within this now want to describe as i'm doing this feathering also works quite well for doing animal fur or doing hair or doing grasses so what i'm doing now is i'm still keeping my strokes all in the same direction but i'm making myself little tree kind of within the lighter blue that use now i'm going to add different color going to give little yellow to the sky here didn't have lot of pastels sitting near me that were the right colors and values so jumped up real quick and got some more needed something little darker to indicate that tree so again this is something that it's beautiful technique when people do it correctly but this can also be done not just to create painting with the feathering technique but to create little areas using feathering like said with animal fur hair grasses etc now the next technique is one that use quite often it's the side stroke like said before about pastels being able to be used as drawing medium they can be used as painting medium by using more of the broad side of the pastel often break my pastels in half so that have shorter areas but keep some of them longer and i've learned that can make side strokes not the full length of the pastel without even having to break them if kind of lift up on the back side of it you can see how i'm doing that there also another important point to make about all of these techniques is pressure we have the ability to control our stroke and our results based on how hard or soft we're pressing with the pastel as you can see in the stroke that made here the next technique is obviously similar to the one we just did it is still side stroke but we have the ability to layer our side strokes and again use this technique lot like using the broad side of the pastel and then you can do the same thing i'm just reversing the colors here once again you see how that creates kind of new color thought this was good time for me to describe why prefer layering technique rather than blended technique in this little example you can see the blended color is on the left side the layered colors on the right side when we blend colors together we often crush the little particles within soft pastels that give them their gorgeous color and the end result can come out muddy or dull find that minimal blending is okay sometimes at beginning stages of painting but the final result is so much more vibrant if we use the layering technique that you can see on the right the next technique is pointillism it's similar to broken color but the mark making is bit smaller they're really like little dots so i'm going to do the same thing did with broken color first applying little dots random now they don't have to be equidistant apart and actually to me they are more painterly and artistic if they're not so patterned and consistent and in this first example i've given my points little breathing room they're not so close together so i'm keeping them more spacious i'm claustrophobic so would rather be one of these points than the next one i'm going to make and here you can see that my points are now in the next example lot tighter closer together and what happens as result of that is you get little bit more of the illusion of new color when they are so spacious you kind of see the teal and the yellow but now you can see it does make little bit more of green when they're closer in proximity to each other the next technique is scumbling another favorite of mine and think it is because of the randomness of the strokes now again my left-handedness you can't quite see what i'm doing here but you will in minute i'm basically making little squiggly marks just kind of random kind of turning the marks in different directions as go and i'm going to do the same thing as the pointillism example i'm going to make the second example bit tighter in proximity with my marks and again it will create more of an illusion of new color because of things being so close together the next technique is called twist or twisting often we can create energetic marks by just turning our hand to create ribbon type of an effect and again this is using the broad side of the pastel as opposed to the point and again back to the drawing element of soft pastels and like to remind people to keep gestural quality and stroke to your hand allow your hand hold your pastel very gently allow your hand to move with the pastel and also in the next example i'll talk about controlling the pressure but in this example i'm just creating strokes in free and flowing method now i'd also like to mention that often don't use drawing elements or techniques to painting until more towards the end use bigger broader stroke work at the beginning of painting we often say in art that we go big to small we work large big shapes and block in our basic big forms before we get too detailed this next technique focuses on rolling of pastel if you've got nice round pastel why not utilize the beauty of being able to roll it you're going to get different line widths and pressures as you roll it around and you get randomness that think you will immediately notice the difference between this technique and the drawing technique that just used before there's brokenness to things in nature that sounds poetic doesn't it but there is brokenness our world has fallen and it's not perfect anymore but better not get to preaching i'll stick with art now let's talk about pressure no that's another thing could get philosophical about no seriously pressure is the same as the example did before about how we have the ability to change pressures and it really does create more of an artistic style once again when my left handedness gets out of the way here notice the mark making in this technique in rolling and pressure and how it differs from the drawing technique so really love being able to use these different techniques to create more of painterly and artistic style this last technique dusting is lot of fun don't have many times when need to use it but it's perfect technique if you need to create things such as stars snow or even fireflies so what i'm doing i'm using actually my lemon zester use it for ginger too and i'm just grating little bits of pastel onto the surface and i'm going to use various colors for this example now i'm using teal so i'm using lavender teal and believe yellow now you may be thinking well how is that pastel going to stay on that surface won't it just blow off and of course it would if didn't do what i'm about to do i'm using piece of glassine now you could use wax paper for this example or tracing paper you're really just putting something down that you can put pressure on top of in my case i've in the past i've used wine bottle but in this case just grabbed glass so i'm just using anything rounded and hard to press down pretty hard on my dusted pastels and sure enough they will stay i've done this technique multiple times but in one example did it for galaxy like nebula if you've ever seen that effect and it worked really well for all of those mini stars now i'm going to go ahead and blow and know you can't see what just did but blew and nothing came off so this technique really does work nicely so those were 12 of the many techniques that we can use with pastel mark making and now let's talk about erasing pastels can it be done yes pastels can be removed we can use multiple tools this is kneaded eraser which feels bit like piece of putty this is an older one that's why it's darker but you can sort of clean the eraser by stretching it and molding it to get new area now we can also use stiff bristle brush this is regular paintbrush but you can use really stiff brush to get lot of the pastel off now have already blended this one in so it's not going to come off as good as some of the stroke work had done where didn't press it with my finger or another blending tool see how this one removes bit better just blew some of the pastel off so we can remove bit of the pastel by using stiff bristle brush but do find that the kneaded eraser works quite well so watch how after brushing off the majority of the pastel when use the eraser and once again keep stretching it to get new part of the eraser to work from because it gets kind of dirty with the pastel you just keep stretching it and molding it and can continue to use this technique and process to get lot of the pastel off the surface now this technique also works bit better on the blended portion more so than the brush that used before you can see that it still does do bit of erasing now there is one other technique that you can use to say rescue failed painting and it's using water however can't do it on this surface this is not water friendly surface so stay tuned we'll be getting to that and with that perfect segue let's talk about some of the different pastel surfaces that we can work on some of them are water friendly some are not some are sanded some are unsanded and there's just so much to choose from so let's first talk about sanded versus unsanded common unsanded surface for many pastel artists and usually one of the first things you try on your new pastel journey is canson me taunts it's french word used to say that word wrong all the time but it's great surface it doesn't give lot of layering but once again unsanded papers have their advantages have video tutorial where literally create the same painting on sanded and an unsanded surface i'll try to put card up here link to that video now also canson started making paper that's bit sanded and it's called look for the word touch it's canson me taunts touch and it has slight sanded surface now let's talk about some sanded surfaces that you can get for pastel painting and some of the advantages one of my favorite sanded surfaces is by sennelier another french word they also make soft pastels and this surface is pretty coarse but it's great for animal portraits and landscapes comes in different colors keep in mind this is not water friendly surface so you can't do the technique i'll mention later about repurposing your pastel painting surface that i've really come to love lately is pastel matte now this is white piece of pastel matte but it comes in different colors it also is type of sanded surface not nearly as sanded as the sennelier this is water friendly paper you can literally wash your painting off and even give little scrub to it so that is great advantage to this paper now this is another water friendly paper with bit more of sanded surface called uart paper it comes in different grades or grits as you can see in the photo and it's also great for washing off painting and repurposing now have found that uart paper often curls on me so i've started using another brand almost just like uart paper called fisher and get the 400 grit and it doesn't curl or warp at all now since many of the pastel papers are water friendly let's talk about pastels and water was very surprised early in my pastel journey to learn that you can wet pastels and you can use water or alcohol and yes even gin or vodka qualifies get that question all the time this is little mr spritzer bottle have that has alcohol in it and i'm going to demonstrate now some different methods of combining soft pastels and water or alcohol now this is the piece of uart paper once again very similar to fisher paper and first to demonstrate i'm just applying that's broken sennelier it was kind of dirty too just applying some pastel to the surface that's big terry ludwig pastel and this is diane townsend look at that gorgeous green and while this isn't lesson on the different types of pastel it is kind of neat to see some of them this is mount vision iridescent pastel it actually does have some sparkle in it you can't see it great here now here is the reason why not to use cheap brush grabbed brush real quickly and it's so cheap that bristles were coming off so grabbed one of my better brushes to finish this exercise now i'm just using water here have paper towel sometimes to kind of control my water sometimes have little too much and so i'm gradually going from more water to less water in that example now i'm just applying bunch of water to this diane townsend one you can see how luscious that works it also works great with the mount vision and you can combine colors as well so pastels really can work like watercolor and in this example you can see how applied the pastel first and then added the water but i'll show you soon how you can literally use pastels like little watercolor palettes and paint the water right on the pastel to grab some color and put it down on your surface for the next water friendly demonstration i'm using pastel matte sorry for the little teeny piece didn't want to ruin whole big sheet i'm so frugal so in this one am also putting down the pastel first and like made the little note before like the white surface of pastel matte because can tone my papers any color that want i'm not restricted to what the company provides for me i'm speeding this one up because it's the same technique that used before but this one is just on the pastel mat now for this example am once again using little teeny piece of pastel matte and i'm doing different technique this time i'm putting the water directly on the pastel and you can see that it works better on different brands of pastels am going to do another video have one already that's older on different brands of pastels and some of the things that love about all of them really but you can see here how the end result is little bit different when you use the pastel almost like little paint tube to work from now let's talk about another surface that is definitely water friendly it's watercolor paper use watercolor paper so often because know it is cheaper alternative for many artists who are starting it's easy to come by you can find it anywhere and i'm using alcohol in this example to do similar technique of applying the pastel and then adding water or alcohol alcohol in this case to this little swatch of watercolor paper now what i'm doing i'm using the spritzer and i'm watching the drips happen actually really love doing things like this on watercolor paper to create an interesting under painting to begin painting you see can still blend the different pastel colors with brush afterwards if you want to and also i'll try to put card above to video have of how you can make this into pastel surface with various techniques and this is another neat little technique you can do with watercolor paper or any water friendly paper where like to embrace the drips and sometimes you can use gravity in your favor in this case i'm turning it upside down after spritzing it with alcohol and creating some tree trunks by the the random method that they kind of flow and then adding little bit extra so there's so many different things that you can do using water and alcohol with soft pastels wow we really covered lot of material in this video and it was lot of fun hope you've learned lot but now it's time to combine all of these things for an actual painting so i'm using little baby piece again of pastel matte this is the white again and i'm just going to use the pastels that have sitting right next to me i'm also going to demonstrate another question get all the time about spray fixative when to use it and when not to use it will use it later in the painting so i'm really speeding this one up here because the video is getting kind of long but i'm showing you how just kind of used layering technique there now i'm using blending technique with chamois cloth to kind of get in value study i'm just doing this out of imagination and once again only with the pastels that have next to me so you don't have to have all these huge sets sometimes if you've got enough color and value value is key have lots of videos on that decided to tape this down so now i'm using lighter value for the sky kind of doing fractured sky like in one of the techniques at the beginning of the video and now i'm using water because this is water friendly paper the pastel matte paper now i'm using the technique of value and color temperature have another video on that and adding some of these blues some cooling off the trees in the background and lots of other techniques such as scumbling broken color and by the way hope you will subscribe to this channel if you haven't already and if you'd like little more instruction or to support this channel please consider supporting me on my patreon page it keeps these videos coming for free to so many people who want to learn more about pastel painting and now i'm adding some luscious reds do think went and grabbed little bit of darker red with flowers it's often good to put down darker value and then little bit of brighter value on top of it and this was fun this is literally like little bookmark size which was kind of neat and now is when i'm actually going to use the spray fixative i'm using blair low odor fixative and you can't see my hand in this but i'm angling it to where i'm just spraying little bit of that foreground things are darker in value in the foreground and what the fixative does is it darkens the foreground which works artistically and also it gives you little bit more of layering capability now the question get often about fixative and pastel painting is do you fix your painting at the end never do final coating of fixative at the end of painting only use it in my favor to darken an area or to add little bit more layering so now i'm using little bit of the the stroke the drawing or you could call it the feathering technique various different techniques from the examples that showed earlier love adding teals and cooler colors in grasses and here i'm using another new pastel kind of using the rolling and the pressure technique talked about before keeping it very loose and carefree is the word like to use grasses don't grow in patterns they usually are very flowing and free so hope you guys loved that so please like this video and comment i'd love to know what you think it really does help my youtube standing and to make my videos suggested more often so try some of these techniques and if you're patron of mine please share it in our homework album you know what i'm talking about patrons alright guys happy painting and come back soon you