Pastels for the Absolute Beginner

If you’re new to pastels, or trying to improve your skills, you will find this book immensely useful. Tips, tricks, techniques - all simply explained and and easy to implement. It can’t fail to improve your pastelling.

Excellent tutorial book.

I liked this book I’m a beginner and needed information on how to use soft pastels this book is veryInformed and lots of nice pictures to follow. I’m very pleased.

I am quite new to art, having started some evening classes recently. Having chosen pastels as my medium for colour work, I found it hard to lay the pastel down in the right way to get the desired effect. This book has contains really clear explanations on how to use dry pastels, with discussions of different techniques for mark making, layering colour and generally getting different effects, and has some great tutorials to work through to practice these techniques and build up different kinds of composition. The author does recommend a particular brand of soft pastel, which is quite expensive, but from my experience you can do just as well using a cheap and cheerful brand to start with, and invest in better pastels once you've got some basics under your belt.

I am not new to painting having done watercolour for 25 years. But I am new to pastel. I have tried a few books on pastel for beginners but none of them were really any good. Until this one. This lady sure knows how to take you through the first steps of pastel painting. As she explains in the book' They are not masterpieces she is teaching you to paint, but exercises in the control of pastels. Though I would say there are a bit more than exercises. For the first time in months of searching, I now feel more confident in buying the right kind of equipment to get me on the road to pastel painting. You will even find out how to master the use of charcoal. If it's pastel painting for beginners you are after, then look no further than here. You will not be disapointed.

As the title says, this book is perfect for the Absolute Beginner. I've tried a couple of the exercises with complete success and I have very little experience with pastels and have only ever attempted two pieces of artwork prior to buying this book. It doesn't assume you know anything about paper, types of pastel, accessories which is exactly what you need as a complete beginner, so you don't feel daunted at all. I thoroughly recommend this book and if the author ever resumes any of her workshops after COVID, i would love to sign up for one.

A lot of information

A really good book for the absolute beginner, or someone who hasn't done art for years and has forgotten everything they learned. It describes what you need to start working with pastels, and unlike some books it then takes you through the basics of light and shadow, tone and colour. It takes you through pastel techniques, and then a series of stroke by stroke pictures, covering landscapes, seascapes, sky, people, animals. A thoroughly good book to get you started.