Claude J. Millette                          OIL AND PASTELS

Soft pastels preceded oil as a painting medium.  Many of the painters of the 19th century painted primarily in pastel.  Degas is probably the most well known painter who enjoyed the use of pastel. 

 

Advantages of pastel.   1) Pastel is more  durable than mediums with a chemical substrate such as oil because it does not change chemically over time. Protected under glass, pastels will last as long as the Lascaux Cave paintings of France. 

2) Pastels are beautiful. There are effects produced in pastels that cannot be reproduced with other mediums. Pastel is made up of individual flecks of colored chalk. Light bounces off each fleck of chalk to produce an interesting luminosity unparalleled by other mediums.

3) Traditionally, pastel was applied to rough papers and some form of spray was used to fix it to the paper.  This is no longer necessary.  New surfaces for painting in pastel made of wood or paper offer  a sandpaper surface that grips onto the pastel chalk and made the need for fixatives redundant.