The Complete Handbook of Pastels

Chapter 1: Understanding Pastels

A pastel is not a crayon, and it is not chalk. It is a solid, concentrated stick of pure pigment held together by the smallest amount of binder necessary for it to maintain its shape. This distinction is the foundation of everything that follows in this handbook. When you draw with a pastel, you are not applying a colored wax or oil film to a surface; you are mechanically depositing millions of microscopic pigment particles onto the tooth of the paper. The binder's only job is to keep the pigment in a usable form until it touches the paper. After that, the binder is mostly irrelevant. What you see is the pigment itself, sitting on the surface, reflecting light directly to your eye. This is why pastel work has a distinctive, velvety, luminous quality that is unlike any other medium.

Consider what happens when you paint with oils. The pigment is suspended in a drying oil, and as the oil cures, it forms a transparent film that surrounds the pigment particles. Light must pass through this film, and the film's refractive index affects the perceived color. Similarly, in watercolor, the gum arabic binder forms a thin layer that holds the pigment in a matrix. In both cases, the binder is a permanent part of the optical path. With a pastel, the binder (often gum tragacanth or methyl cellulose) is present in such a low concentration that it does not form a continuous film. The pigment particles