Pastels

Pastels look like sticks of pure color. In reality, soft and hard pastels are made of varying proportions of pigment, binder, and sometimes clay. The word pastel comes from paste, the form this mixture takes before it is formed into sticks.

Pastels work best when applied to a textured surface, which grabs the pastel. Soft pastels are more easily blendable than hard pastels. Hard pastels, shaped as a square stick with hard edges, can be used to draw fine lines. Frequently, the two forms of pastels are used together. The paintings in this exhibit were created primarily using soft pastels, with limited use of hard pastels.

There are also pan pastels, small pans that contain pastel in a loose powder form. This type of pastel is unique in that it can be mixed on a palette. It is applied with specialized tools.

All of these types of pastels are water soluble and can be used to make washes of color, such as one can do with watercolor paint.

A quite different type of pastel is oil pastel. It is not usually water soluble, and was only invented in the 20th century: “In 1949, Pablo Picasso asked Henri Sennelier to create a new medium that had qualities of oil paint and soft pastel in an easy to apply stick form." 

(https://www.fineartstore.com/s-2010-sennelier.aspx0)