Hard and Soft Pastels: Know Your Composition and Colors!

by Sean Moynihan
(Denver, Colorado)

One thing I have learned from using pastels, is that it takes time to blend colors together, it takes many layers. So plan out your compostion, get a rough sketch going of what your subject is, and what colors you generally want.

Now a tip that will bring amazing color to your painting: You can use this with any medium, but it looks more vibrant with pastels; henever you want to shade, or draw a subject with lots of dark shadows, use complimentary colors together to get a shadow, instead of using blacks and greys.

For example, say my subject is a tree. Well to get its shadow, take green and its complimentary color red and mix them. The results are a dark, yet colorful shade. Trust me it works!