How to Paint With Soft Pastels

Hello artists and welcome to the Sennelier atelier. Today let’s try our soft pastel paint. The pastel Sennelier is extra soft pastel done with pure pigments so colours are amazing. They are available in full stick and half stick. We will use half sticks today and it is a very famous range of Sennelier created by Gustave Sennelier in 1904 so a very old range very interesting to work with. And we will do our first paint on Pastel Card, this is a famous paper very specific for soft pastels. We will need a pen for the first sketch, we will need pastelist it is a Sennelier pastel brush, we need a cloth because we will work with the hands and we will need a pastel fixative specific Sennelier. Pastel fixative made specifically for soft pastels. I suggest you to try with something very simple. We will do a red apple. Firstly let’s go to make the first sketch. Pastel Card is very pleasant to work with it is grained but sweet, there are no other paper like that, that why pastelists like it. Just a very simple sketch. The first thing we going to do for the red apple is to create a first coat of for example yellow colour. As you can see all the colours can get apply on the Pastel Card is very pleasant, very handy. I can do for example the background in brown with different shades. This is a half stick but if you prefer you can also use full sticks they are available as well. So you’ve seen the first time I apply only colours on the paper without touching anything else. I choose the colours for the background because there is no background on my picture, but I decide to create one. When it is done I’ll apply the colour onto the paper with the finger like this. See how the yellow colour is very bright. No details it is not necessary, this is the first coat of the paint. We’re going to do something very simple, just to show you how easy it is to work with extra soft pastels. Then, the apple is red is not a yellow one, so we will add the red colour which is very luminous, very bright. So this side is darker, as you know there is always the complementary colours here it will be green. For the first step we work a lot with the finger and after we will blend colors. And make details with the brushes. Let’s do the colour on the leaf, the goal is to play with colours, try different colours, add some few paint as if it is a brush, we work on the same way. With the pastelist brush I’ll refine the details, for example for the leaf. And it is pleasant as well to work with a brush. The light comes from this side so I make it “awesome” and there is as well touch of colours here just for the light reflection.
So you see, very easy! You work with hands, with colours, this paper is fantastic to work with and you work with the pastelist brushes. Now it’s your turn create your own! If you have liked this video thank you for like it or why not share it! Bye!