Dry art pastel is an interesting material for creativity, allowing you to work in different techniques. Pastel is suitable for painting still lifes and for drawing expressive portraits. To make working with a dry bed a pleasure, you need to choose the right paper for it.
Most often, you can find dry pastels on sale in the form of crayons or pastel pencils. There are three types of material: hard dry pastels, soft pastels and super soft art pastels.
High-quality professional or semi-professional dry pastels are not the cheapest materials for creativity. However, in stores, it is sold both in small universal or narrowly focused, for example, only for drawing a portrait, in sets, and individually. A wide range of options allows you to choose the material to your taste and save a little.
Artistic pastels blend beautifully to create various complementary shades. It is easy to draw beautiful gradients and transitions with it. High-quality material for creativity has a dense coating, it is remarkably layered and shaded. Both soft dry pastels and hard pastels are washed out with water, like watercolor pencils, which allows you to get an interesting effect and "revive" the drawing.
However, dry pastel is a material for which you definitely need to choose the right paper. Otherwise, even an expensive pastel will behave unpredictably, it will be inconvenient to draw with it, and the picture will ultimately turn out to be unsuccessful.
What paper to choose for dry pastels
Special pastel paper is produced for pastels. It is dense, has a rough surface. But cheap options for such paper do not differ in quality. They do not allow layering of material in large quantities, they easily go in piles after prolonged shading. If you want to get an excellent result, you should not save on pastel paper.
In addition to pastel paper, watercolor paper is suitable for drawing with pencils and bars: coarse-grained and fine-grained. The density of the sheets is at least 200 g / m2. Dry pastel does not look better on snow-white sheets, so you should choose ivory watercolor paper, baked milk, pastel shades. It is not recommended to give preference to watercolor paper coated canvas. These sheets are too rough to be painted on with dry art pastels. Achieving even coverage and neat shading is problematic.
Dry pastels in bars and pencils are perfectly combined with ordinary craft paper. Sketchbooks and folders with craft are inexpensive, they act as an economical option. But it is worth remembering that craft sheets are quite thin, it will be difficult to paint a full picture on them. Kraft is suitable for quick sketches and pastels only in dry technique. You cannot add water, otherwise the thin sheet will go in a wave, and the colors of the crayons will be distorted.
For soft and super-soft art pastels, you can use colored cardboard or thick paper, the surface of which is not glossy, but velvet. These sheets are usually sold in kits from the clerical department. For hard dry pastels, velvet colored sheets will not work. Crayon or pencil will peel off the top velvet covering, which can be difficult to work with.
An interesting option on what to paint with dry pastels is ordinary sanding paper or sandpaper. Sandpaper sheets of different shades and sizes are sold in specialized stores. For dry pastels, choose only fine-grained sandpaper.
What paper is definitely not suitable for dry art pastels
- Printer paper. She's too thin.
- Marker paper. The surface is smooth, the sheets are too thin.
- Paper for graphics or drawings. There is no rough surface, because of this, colored chips from crayons or pencils have nothing to cling to. Drawing with pastels on such paper can be painful, especially for a beginner.
