Making pastels by hand

[Laura B. Shelley]

I'm exclusively a pastelist at the moment, but I enjoy color mixing, so I've been investigating homemade pastels. I've made about a hundred custom sticks with some of the Wallis pastel dough pigments, and I just ordered some dry umber, sienna and Mars pigments for further experiments.

I've discovered that being able to say "I make some of my colors myself" is a strong selling point for pastel commissions, even though I wasn't thinking of that when I got into it. There seems to be a stereotype even among clients who know something about the medium that using only commercial colors is less creative, or something. I don't agree with that, but I'm not above mentioning the fact that I mix my own just to see their eyes light up.

Does anyone here have experience with pastel making? I'm not likely to fool with cadmiums or anything else that's dangerous in dust form, but I'm interested in getting more colors as I go. The earths are apparently easy to handle on their own and don't really require binder to make a well-textured stick, but I hear that other pigments can be trickier. I may make an expedition to the Sinopia store in San Francisco soon. Any recommendations?

Laura Shelley
www.laurashelley.com

[Sharon Knettell]

Laura,

You are really brave and must have a lot of time. Not that I want to discourage you, but the people I have sold my pastels to really don't care if I make my pastels myself. I think that the picture is the thing that should sell itself, regardless of whether or not the pastels are handmade.

If there are some colors that elude you, perhaps. There are so many wonderful pastels that have been manufactured in the last few years, I have most of the sets. In relative order of my preference, Great American, Unison, Schminke, Girault, Mt. Vision, Sennelier, Rembrandt and Nupastel. Your preference would of course of depend on the consistency you prefer in pastels.

The Great Americans have some really nice skin-tone sequences.

Another area you have to be aware of is the light fastness of each pigment you use. The manufacturers all use pigments from the same sources- Sinopia and Kremer-Pigmente are two that I am familiar with. There are new tests in progress going on under the auspices of the ASTM. Unisons have come through with flying colors and the president of Great Americans assured me his did not flunk either. His word. I am not certain.

If you think you can improve on these or better yet, save money, go for it! I got my Unisons before the dollar descended.

[Laura B. Shelley]

I'm one of those cooks who buys all her spices whole and pounds them in a mortar to make customized curry pastes. So pastel making was probably inevitable once I took up the medium. It's not particularly time-consuming if you consider that each stick is amortized over many paintings; it's something like mixing your portrait tints before starting work on an oil painting, only the colors never dry up!

Yes, I have trouble with commercial pastel sets on a couple of counts. I have a lot of small sets or half-stick assortments that I acquired while testing out various brands. After messing around with all of those for a while, I tried to settle on a full set of one brand or perhaps a couple of brands in order to have a truly full range of colors.

However, I looked at the range of colors available in the standard sets and couldn't justify spending so much for so many I probably wouldn't use very often. Their selections don't have a lot to do with my color sense, and buying multiple sets tends to get you duplicates of boilerplate colors rather than a broader range. My budget is very finite, so I have to be careful with purchases. I can't afford to buy a big set of high-priced pastels and basically throw away a quarter to a third of the sticks. I could buy open stock, and I have plenty of random sticks that I got that way, but that adds up fast and still doesn't get me where I want to go. In my most-used areas of the spectrum, there never seem to be enough shades in commercial brands to cover what I want to do.

So it comes down to making my own; after a couple of years of head-scratching, that's what seems to work best for me. I'm a bit of a pigment wonk anyway; I've got sheets of pastel test swatches that I've exposed in south-facing windows and all that jazz.

The main problem is finding reliable pigment information for pastels specifically, rather than for watercolor or oil. Pigment working characteristics in dry sticks are a whole different ballgame than in liquid binders. Just for instance, ultramarine is notoriously stringy in oil and usually gets plenty of things added to it for manageability, but in pastel it is so perfectly velvety-textured that adding it to any mix will improve the qualities of the finished stick.

If handmade pastels were the only selling point for my commissions, I'd be selling the pastels instead. Without getting into all of the technicalities and boring my clients to tears, I think telling them I make my colors says something about how I approach the whole thing. (Like the daughter of a NASA physicist and a systems programmer, probably.)

[Sharon Knettell]

Laura,

I applaud you. We had a technical course in art school where they taught us how to make egg tempera and oil paint. That was the end of homemade art supplies for me.

I have to say that the pastel sets were quite an investment. I could never make all the pastels sufficient to do one of my paintings as they are so large. The last one I finished '"Alicia Blue" is 53"x 68". She is posted in the professional unveilings section.

Doesn't Kitty Wallis have more information for you? I remember calling them and they seemed to be quite forthcoming.

I did talk to the president of Great American. I like his pastels very much as they do not crumble like Senneliers and they have quite an extensive range of colors. He told me something very interesting vis-a-vis Senneliers. He told me that they had not changed their technology since they started, which had to be about 125? years ago. He started investigating new methods to come up with his product. He said he got started because he was a laid off computer engineer and took a course on color. That got him started. So the information is out there somewhere.

I wish I could be more help.

[Laura B. Shelley]

I have some serious reservations about Senneliers, so I'd certainly agree with him. Schmincke is probably my favorite among the most easily available brands (that is, the ones my local art store carries in open stock). I don't think I've ever had one crumble on me or turn out to be hard and scratchy.

I've never yet gotten my paws on Great Americans. Yours is certainly not the first strong endorsement I've heard for that brand. I admit I was a little taken aback by their color names. I usually expect something like "Deep Umber Tint 3" instead of "Burnt Reynolds"! But it sounds like I should watch for sales on those so I can try them out.

I've seen your posts about the technical hurdles in working so large in pastel. Now that's an area I'm not too courageous with--my largest pastel so far is only 18x24! I'm going to make some oversize sticks like the giant Senneliers. Do you ever use those?

I've talked to Kitty Wallis several times via PM, and she is incredibly helpful and generous with her time. I have a sample kit of her white pastel base she kindly sent me that I have to test and review; the pre-mixed white has some problems with setting up in the jar, and the kit should get around that. In her work she wants very clean, high-chroma, ungreyed colors, and the pigments in her line are all chosen with that goal in mind. The Wallis doughs are the best way I've found for a home pastel maker to deal with pthalos and quinacridones, which are a bear and a half to mix by hand due to how finely powdered they are and their staining potential.

Man, I'm raring to go mix some colors now. What I really enjoy doing, and have done several times now, is to make a dozen or so custom sticks for each commission as a way of building up my collection, and I've got five new commissions lined up. I hope my new pigments get here soon.

[Sharon Knettell]

Laura,

I only bought the large Sennelier in a black. Other than that none. If you want big pastels, Dakota Art Pastels (www.dakotapastels.com) sells the medium and maybe large Unison pastels. Those are wonderful.

The Great American pastels are somewhat like Schminkes, but have a larger and more coherent color line. Their skin-tone pastels are the ones I seem to end up using the most. Their Midnight has the darkest most velvety deep blue of any of the other manufacturers.

Dakota also has handmade charts of all the pastel lines. They are invaluable if you are looking for a particular color or trying to file a scruffy looking orphan. I put them in a loose-leaf binder.

Let us know of your progress in this endeavor. It would be really interesting.