When the first glance at a pastel painting course is made, one thinks that the tools are extremely simple. Some sticks of colour. Quasi paper. That’s it. No elaborate apparatus, no long thinkings. It is almost too easy in the start as you are missing something. Visit our site for more information!
You’re not.
Most of the courses start with easy strokes and the blends, but the end result is expressed in small decisions. How hard you press. When you have ceased to blend. Where you leave the paper showing through.
Such information is not very exciting, yet it alters everything.
I remember once after one of the lessons when the teacher kept on telling me, do not blend yet. It felt wrong. All my instincts were urging me to smooth-out at once. Withholding, however, actually provided the painting with some more structure at the beginning.
That can also be taught in a good pastel painting course, however, it is not much of a point about timings.
There is no necessity to confuse it all. In fact, it would be more appropriate to be less frequent.
The other thing that is notable is the speed at which errors occur. Pastels are not judgmental but they are there. Once you keep adding more layers on top of each other without thinking, the surface becomes clogged in the short term. Colors begin to appear boring and it is difficult to restore the brightness.
You can get there by accident because of courses which pay too much attention to layering.
The more civilized ones have learned to stop. Not strictly speaking, but merely sufficiently to make you notice it. It comes to a point where the painting is already good and you continue doing it just because you have always done it.
It is there that the bottom falls out.
The more the course is taken, the more one gets to choose the color intuitively. In the beginning, you use whatever palette you are provided. You start to make it warmer or a little colder after some time without thinking much.
That change is slight, nevertheless, it is real progress.
I have also realized that not every pastel paintings classes is suitable to everyone. Others stick to realism in excess, which may be slow to the more carelessly and expressive. Some pass around the structure and leave you wondering.
Finding one that creates a balance between them is a difference.
It has also the mental side that is not talked much. Routine lesson work creates some kind of silent confidence. You are indecisive in every line. You take faster decisions but they might not be ideal.
It is more significant than good technique.
And, of course there are repeating segments of a course. Exercises, similar subjects. You find yourself bored soon when you wish everything was different. And yet there it is in those repetitions that things begin to make a clicking.
You notice patterns. You are acquainted with what is good and what is not so good.
All the problems will not be solved within a night by a pastel painting course. It will not stop you to make a mess piece or even question yourself. Yet it does provide you with a framework to go through those experiences rather than be stuck by them.
And sometimes that is just what you need to keep on.