Understanding pastel as a fine art medium

Pastel is pure pigment pressed into stick form and drawn directly onto paper, with almost no liquid binder in between. That is the whole idea, and it is also why pastel can look more saturated and immediate than almost any other medium: there is very little standing between the colour and your eye. Far from being a sketcher’s afterthought, pastel is a serious fine art medium with a long history and a devoted following among contemporary artists.

What pastel actually is

A soft pastel is made by grinding pigment, mixing it with a small amount of chalk or clay and a weak binder, and rolling the paste into sticks that are then dried. Because the binder content is so low, what you are putting on the paper is essentially the colour itself. This is the key difference from paint, where pigment is suspended in oil, water, or acrylic medium that affects how it dries and how light passes through it.

The result is a colour that sits on the surface as loose particles rather than a sealed film. That gives pastel its characteristic velvety bloom and its remarkable brightness. It also explains the medium’s one practical demand: the surface is delicate and must be protected, which is why finished pastels are framed under glass.

Drawing or painting?

People often ask whether pastel counts as drawing or painting, and the honest answer is that it sits comfortably between the two. Used lightly, in line and hatching, it behaves like a drawing tool. Built up in dense layers, blended with a finger or a stump, and worked until the paper disappears under colour, it covers a surface and reads as a painting. Many of the most admired pastels do both within a single work, leaving bare paper in one passage and full, painterly colour in another.

This flexibility is part of the appeal. An artist can move from a quick gestural mark to a deeply worked area without changing tools, mixing palettes, or waiting for anything to dry.

Why artists choose it

Pastel offers something most media cannot: colour applied with the directness of a hand and the speed of a dry tool. There is no drying time, no medium to mix, and no gap between the decision and the mark. Colours are mixed optically on the paper, by layering and scumbling one over another, rather than on a palette, which keeps them clean and luminous.

It is also unusually durable as pigment. Because there is so little binder to yellow, crack, or shift, a well-kept pastel can hold its colour for centuries. The historical record bears this out: eighteenth-century portrait pastels survive with their colour startlingly intact. The fragility of pastel is entirely about the loose surface, not the longevity of the colour.

The colour can last for centuries; it is only the surface that needs looking after.

How to look at a pastel in a gallery

Stand close, and then step back. Up close you can read how the artist has worked: the direction of the strokes, the grain of the paper showing through, the places where colours have been layered rather than blended. From a distance those separate marks resolve into a single luminous field, which is the optical mixing doing its job. Watercolour and works on paper specialists such as Contemporary Watercolours in Kent are a good place to train your eye on how dry and wet media on paper differ in feel.

Look, too, at the surface itself. Pastel is often worked on a toned or textured paper whose colour is left to show through in places, doing real work in the finished image. The choice of ground is part of the picture, not a neutral backdrop.

Soft pastel versus oil pastel

It is worth separating two things that share a name. Soft, or dry, pastels are the powdery sticks described here. Oil pastels are bound with oil and wax, feel greasy and dense, never fully harden, and are blended quite differently. Both are legitimate, but they produce distinct results, and a gallery label will usually specify which. If a work has a buttery, slightly translucent quality and visible smearing, it is likely oil pastel; the chalky, matte bloom belongs to soft pastel.

Living with a pastel at home

Because the surface is loose pigment, pastels are always glazed, never varnished, and they should never be hung where they will be touched or knocked. A spacer or mount keeps the glass off the surface, since contact can lift colour. Avoid direct sunlight, as you would with any work on paper, and hang the piece somewhere stable rather than above a radiator or in a steamy room.

Beyond that, a framed pastel asks very little. The societies and galleries that champion works on paper, among them Bankside Gallery on London’s South Bank, exist partly to remind us that paper-based media deserve the same standing as oil on canvas. Once you understand what pastel is, that case makes itself: it is colour at its most direct, and one of the most rewarding things you can hang on a wall.