Video: History of Pastel Painting

Degas is the painter most associated with pastels. Learn more about the history of pastel painting in this free pastel painting lesson from a professional artist.

Video Transcript

A lot of people don't realize that pastels are the most permanent artistic medium that exists. They're more permanent than oils or watercolors. And they've been around in being used as an artistic medium since the 1600's. One of the interesting things about pastels. We think of, a lot of people think of pastels as being those wimpy pastely tinted colors that are often used by fair portrait sketchers. That is not pastel painting. That is more like pastel sketching. Pastels can be very rich in color tone. The person that's most associated with pastels was Edgar Degas from France. In the 1800's he became a master of the technique. And some of his paintings in pastels of course sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and they're gorgeous. And unless the painting is identified as a pastel most people wouldn't be able to recognize that it is pastel or different than an oil painting because the colors are so bright and so vibrant. Pastels are basically a dry medium. It's pure pigment in a binder that is non greasy. It's not the same as oil pastels. Those are more like crayons. This is pure artistic pigments ground and mixed in a binder that allows it to be applied to a surface. So let's get into what you need in order to approach a pastel painting. And then we'll get into the painting itself.

History of Pastel Painting

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