About Pastels

What Soft Pastel IS

Soft pastel is pure color pigment powder, bound loosely with a binder, such as gum tragacanth. The pigment is the same pigment used in oil/acrylic paints and is as permanent as oil.

Soft pastel is supplied in varying grades, soft, medium or hard. Shapes vary from thin or fat, square and cylindrical sticks. Soft Pastel is pure pigment colors that are rich and brilliant and, with proper protection, pastel is among the most permanent of all media. Soft Pastel paintings are among the most important works of Degas, Monet, Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hissam, Whistler and many more great well known artists, and pastels are the media of choice of many of the contemporary artists of today.

What Soft Pastel IS NOT

• not chalk (crushed limestone and dye)
• not oil pastel (pigment, animal fat and hydrocarbon wax)