Danger Zone - Experimenting with pastels

Don't they look nice. I got this set from Lidl for about 7 euros a while back and have been waiting for to try them out. So I set up a big canvas yesterday and gave them a shot. I made few lines with them and I came to conclusion that they suck. Meaning they are quite hard and leave a very thin trace of color so they are probably ok for something else. I had made a few pastels of my own the other day, See instructions in this post: How to make dry pastel and ended up using them mostly.

So it's been a while i've tried doing anything with pastels and it's always awkward after a while. I'm just studying how it works feeling around with different marks.

I had prepared two colors which i ended up using all on this one.

The real fun begins and i guess the moment of epiphany. The pastels i made leave a very thick layer of color, consisting mostly of pure pigment. It is possible to spread it around with brush very carefully.

I wasn't very careful...

I end up wiping a lot of the pigment away and but leaving some clean dividing marks there. This is the stuff that gets me excited.

The behaviour of materials, the chance of interesting accidents and destruction.

The random patterns from that emerge, colliding with the ones made on purpose. This is the same thing in principle why i like to paint with thin dripping paint, only here it is the dust and crumbling causing havoc. So now that i found the thing. There is something else to try..

Yeah, wet paint on dry pastel. This is not how you are supposed to do things. The dusty pigment absorbed a lot of the oil and mixed in with the paint, somewhat contrasting colors here dulling a little bit towards neutral. I didn't go full splashy on this one but got some idea how this works. It's kinda sticky.

I had small piece of the red ochre left and i tried it on the wet paint.

I was little surprised how well it stuck. It was soft enough to not scratch the underlying paint away.

So there was again interesting things happening with the textures. Colors popping in different ways.

I was quite pleased with the experiments and i think there is great potential with the pastels, so i just might add them to my permanent arsenal. So do i buy the better ones or If i end up making them, i might just aswell make some of my own paints aswell. There is something to think about.

here's a view of the laboratory. Thanks for reading.