More Supplies

Towards the end of my community ed class in early March it became clear to me that 1) I really enjoyed painting with pastels and 2) I needed to invest in some "soft" pastels. I ended up buying a small set of Sennelier soft pastel half sticks. Sennelier makes very beautiful, rich, soft and smooth pastels (not to be confused with their oil pastels, a completely different beast). I figured the half sticks were the way to go because I could get a feel for them without the additional expense of full sticks.

I also wanted a more complete set of colors, so I also bought a full-stick set of Blick Artists pastels. So-called "soft" pastels actually come in various levels of hardness/softness and generally are classified as hard, medium and soft pastels. The Blick Artists would probably be placed in the medium category. I chose the Blick pastels because 1) they are very reasonably priced compared to other more well known high quality pastels and 2) they were the only ones I could find on the Blick web site that did not have California Prop 65 warnings about potentially harmful, cancer-causing, chemicals. Since I usually use an art barrier cream (Gloves in a Bottle), and I don't eat the pastels, the Prop 65 warning probably shouldn't be that big of a deal. But I figured why not try the Blick pastels and see how they work.

So far I have been very satisfied with the Blick pastels. I have found that some colors (mostly darker) are harder than others, but so far that hasn't been much of a handicap.

Now that I had the pastels I needed to determine what types of pastel support would suit my style (once I figure out what my style is). Through our instructor I found out about the Dakota Pastels web site (http://www.dakotapastels.com/pages/index-sale.aspx). Dakota offers sampler packs of both pastel papers and boards. I put in my orders for both. Now I was ready to go but still didn't know what to paint.