Painting With Pastels

Rating:
Summary: Step-By-Step With British Pastel Painters
Review: I enjoyed this book quite a bit and am somewhat sad to see it out of print now. I bought it only a while ago from Amazon when it was still in print. Perhaps it will return to print again someday.

Each chapter shows demonstrations from various UK pastel painters using different techniques and/or subject matter. One of the odd things is that many of the pastel paintings definitely LOOKED British to me. I don't know what it is but apparently a lot of Brits really like rather drab, dull colors (well, drab & dull to me anyway seeing as I'm from bright, sunny, and in the summer, blisteringly hot Dallas). Maybe it's something to do with UK weather. The landscapes in particular always look like they're painted on a cloudy, overcast day. Go figure...

One chapter demonstrates using pastel for tonal studies (the artist's subject was a landscape). Another chapter demonstrated using pastels for moving water or clouds. Still others for architectural paintings, portraits, wildlife or demonstrating how paper texture and color can change the end result of the same subject.

Practically all of the demonstrations except one are executed in a "painterly" style. That is, a loose manner that showcase the beauty of each stroke. The final demonstration showed one artist who prefers to use pastels in a very tight and highly realistic manner. One of the ways he achieves some of the sharp edges and high definition is the use of mechanical drawing aids such as clear plastic rulers and/or templates to mask out some areas.

This book is most useful to beginner or intermediate pastelists. Advanced pastelists would probably enjoy it more for the paintings shown than for any instruction it holds. The only downside I can think of is if you wanted to learn more about painting in a high definition or realistic style. In that case you'd really only find the last chapter helpful. Overall, I found it to be helpful for my own attempts at learning pastel painting and I think it could be for other beginners as well.