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©  2010  Emma  Ralph  -­‐  All  Rights  Reserved.          www.paintingwithpastels.com  

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PAN PASTELS: A PASTEL REVOLUTION!

By Emma Ralph

©  2010  Emma  Ralph  -­‐  All  Rights  Reserved.          www.paintingwithpastels.com  

                                                       2  

PLEASE NOTE: You Do NOT Have the Right to Reprint or Resell this e-Book

You Also MAY NOT Give Away, Sell,  Copy  or  Share  the  Content  Herein    

 

 

 

If you obtained this report from anywhere other than http://www.paintingwithpastels.com you have a pirated copy. Please help stop Internet crime by reporting this to: mailto:[email protected] © 2009 Copyright Emma Ralph ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval system without express written, dated and signed permission from the author. DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES: The information presented herein represents the view of the author as of the date of publication. Because of the rate with which conditions change, the author reserves the right to alter and update her opinion based on the new conditions. The book is for informational purposes only. While every attempt has been made to verify the information provided in this book, neither the author nor her affiliates/partners assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. If advice concerning legal or related matters is needed, the services of a fully qualified professional should be sought.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS  

Chapter 1: Introduction Page 4

Chapter 2: Pan Pastels Described Page 6

Chapter 3: Tools Page 9

Chapter 4: Techniques Page 16

Chapter 5: Mess, Transport etc Page 24

Chapter 6: Conclusion Page 28

Resources Page 29

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

WHAT  ARE  PAN  PASTELS?  

Most of the artistic mediums in use today –like oil paints, watercolors and pastels – have been around for hundreds of years. They’ve been thoroughly and exhaustively used to create all manner of artworks, and there’s next to nothing that artists don’t know about them.

Pan pastels are something different. They’re something that doesn’t come along very often: a totally new artistic medium. Of course they’re not a world away from soft pastels, but as we’ll see in this eBook, they really do differ in some highly significant ways from their much older cousins.

If you’re reading this you’re almost certainly already familiar with soft pastels, and perhaps you’ve used hard pastels and oil pastels as well. Your first question is therefore likely to be, “what’s the difference between pan pastels and the soft pastels that I’m already using?” We’ll answer that question and many more.

A word about nomenclature: the official name of pan pastels is in fact PanPastel™, but we’ll keep referring to them by the descriptive ‘pan pastels’ throughout the eBook. The official website of PanPastel™, is www.panpastel.com.

Pan pastels are made by the company Colorfin LLC (www.colorfin.com). Colorfin say that they wanted to create a new tool for artistic expression by marrying a dry medium with a wet-medium ‘painterly’ technique. Did they succeed? We’ll find out!

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Colorfin also make a range of tools for use with pan pastels. As we’ll see they’re an important part of the pan pastel experience.

Ok! Let’s continue.

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CHAPTER 2

PAN PASTELS DESCRIBED

 

First things first: what are pan pastels? Pan pastels are made from high quality artists’ pigments using a manufacturing process that, according to Colorfin, requires only a minimal amount of binder. The mixture is shaped and pressed into tablets that are contained in round, clear plastic pans. The pans have a diameter of 2.38” (62mm) and each contains 9ml of color. (As an aside, Colorfin claim that each pan contains 40% more pigment than the average soft pastel stick, consequently yielding approximately 4 times the coverage.)

Pan pastels come in 20 basic ‘mass tones.’ There are also 20 tints of the mass tones (that is, mass tone + white), 20 shades of the mass tones (mass tone + black), and 20 extra dark shades of the mass tones as well.

The clear plastic pans that pan pastels come in have screw-on clear plastic lids, and the pans are also threaded at the bottom so that the pans can be stacked and screwed together. Colorfin also make clear plastic ‘storage jars’ the same diameter as the pastel pans that are also threaded so that they can be stacked and screwed together with the pastels pans.

So: unlike the pre-existing kinds of pastels (soft pastels, hard pastels and oil pastels) pan pastels aren’t shaped into hand-holdable sticks. They discard the hand-held format entirely in favor of a pressed pan format.

At this point you may be thinking “but if they aren’t hand-holdable, how do you get them onto your painting surface?” The answer is that like with wet

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paints, you use a tool of some kind to lift the pigment from the pan and apply it to the painting surface. More on this below under the Tools section.

ADVANTAGES OF THE PRESSED PAN FORMAT

By now you might be wondering why pan pastels use a pressed pan format. After all, soft pastels, hard pastels and oil pastels all use a stick format, and it seems to work well – well enough that they’ve been around for hundreds of years and are virtually unchanged from when they were first invented. Why did Colorfin decide to discard the stick format in favor of pressed pans? There are two answers: softness and vibrancy.

Softness

Having to shape pigment into hand-holdable sticks imposes some limitations on the medium. Soft pastels are, as the name implies, soft, but still they need to be firm enough to withstand being handled without falling apart.

Pan pastels are a considerable degree softer again than soft pastels. Colorfin claims that they are the softest pastel in the world, and that might well be correct.

‘Softness,’ which we could alternatively call creaminess, is a great property in a pastel medium. There are two reasons. The first is that softness makes pan pastels feel and behave more like wet paint. They‘re smooth, uniform and – in the words of one blogger – “they go on like a dream.”

The second reason why softness/creaminess is a great property is that it means less dust is given off during the painting process. With pan pastels, what goes onto the painting surface stays there, and isn’t easily dislodged (as unfortunately can be the case with soft pastels). If you currently use soft pastels and the mess/dust is a problem for you, then you should definitely try pan pastels just for this reason alone.

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Vibrancy

In addition to being very soft, pan pastels are also very color-rich, more so than even the most vibrant soft pastels. Again, that’s presumably because as they don’t need to hold a shape, pan pastels can be made with more pigment and minimal binder. The advantage of this quality is that you don’t need to layer as much, and risk overloading your painting surface, in order to get the rich, bright colors that you want.

Summary

It’s hard to overstate how significant the above two properties of pan pastels are. Extreme softness and rich, vibrant colors are two highly desirable traits in a dry artistic medium. Soft pastels are already soft and vibrant, but pan pastels take these two properties to the next level.

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CHAPTER 3

TOOLS

As noted above, Colorfin make a range of tools for use with pan pastels. Collectively, these tools are known as ‘Sofft Tools’ (see www.sofftart.com).

There are four categories of Sofft Tools made by Colorfin: Sofft Knives; Sofft Art Sponges; Sofft Shapers, and Sofft Applicators.

Sofft Knives

The basic tools used with pan pastels are called Sofft Knives. Most of the time it’s a Sofft Knife that you’ll reach for when you want to transport the pigment from pan to painting surface. In terms of their shape, Sofft Knives are clearly modeled on painting knives, with flared handles and offset heads.

Colorfin makes four different Sofft Knives, all of which are identical except for the shape of their heads. The four types/shapes are:

• No.1 Round:

• No.2 Flat:

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• No.3 Oval:

• No.4 Point:

Each of the four Sofft Knives has a corresponding soft ‘micropore’ sponge cover, shaped to fit over its particular head shape. These are officially called Sofft Covers. The Sofft Covers are non-abrasive, so they glide easily over even ‘toothy’ paper (and this is true of all the Sofft Tools). It’s the sponge head that picks up the pigment (more of this below under the Techniques section).

Each of the Sofft Knives is good for a different task. For examples, the triangular-shaped head on the No.4 Sofft Knife is good for fine details, while the rounded head on the No.1 Sofft Knife is perfect for blocking in things like clouds. The other two also have specific things they’re best at too.

It doesn’t take long before you know exactly which Sofft Knife to reach for instinctively for each part of your painting. You’ll work out your particular favorites pretty quickly too. You can also use the sides and edges of the Sofft Knives to get different marks and effects.

Also, you’ll notice that the sponginess of the Sofft Knife heads has an impact on the way that you work. Their ‘give’ allows you to vary how hard you press in order to achieve different effects. This benefit is a little hard to describe, but within seconds of using a Sofft Knife you’ll get a feel for it.

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Sofft Art Sponges

Another set of tools made by Colorfin for use with pan pastels are Sofft Art Sponges. These are a range of hand-holdable sponges that look somewhat like large pencil erasers. They’re made from the same micropore foam as

Sofft Covers.

There are eight different Art Sponges in total, each with a different shape. These are:

• Two ‘Angle Slice’ Sponges – Round and Flat:

• A Big Oval Sponge:

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• A Round Sponge:

• Four ‘Sponge Bars’ – Round, Flat, Point and Wedge (these are intended to replicate four different ways of using your finger).

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Just like the Sofft Knives, each Art Sponge is suited to a particular task, though of course there’s a lot of overlap. Some, like the Big Oval, are better for blocking in large areas of color, while others, like the four Sponge Bars, are better for marking specific shapes and marks, thick and thin lines and finer details. Again, it’s a (short) process of trial and error to work out which tool to use for which task.

The good thing about all the Art Sponges is that using them is a very direct, very tactile experience. In other words, it’s a bit like using your finger or your hand, which apparently is just what Colorfin intended when they created them.

In addition to working well with dry pan pastels, Sofft Art Sponges are great for using with wet washes. More on this below under the Techniques section.

The Sofft Shaper

The Sofft Shaper has a straight wooden handle, a metal throat and a flexible silicone tip. The silicone tip can be used as it is to work with pan pastels or other mediums, but it’s also shaped to fit the No.2 Flat Sofft Cover.

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Sofft Applicators

There are two Sofft Applicators: the Applicator and the Mini Applicator.

Like the Sofft Shaper, the Sofft Applicator has a straight wooden handle and a metal throat. At the end of the metal throat is a hole into which very small removable and replaceable micropore sponge heads fit. Sofft Applicators are great for when you need a lot of control, as you can grip them up near the head.

Mini Applicators are miniature versions of the Sofft Applicator with much shorter handles. They’re the smallest tool made by Colorfin and are useful for applying colors in hard-to-reach places, should you need to do that.

Reusability of Sofft Tools

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) Sofft Tools don’t last forever. Eventually the micropore foam on Sofft Covers, Art Sponges and the other tools becomes too dirty to give you a clean application of color and can no longer be washed clean either. When this happens it’s time to discard them and replace them with new ones. Luckily, replacements aren’t expensive.

Note that with the Sofft Covers you can use both sides. Once one side gets too dirty just peel it off, flip it over and pull it back onto the Sofft Knife head and you can continue working with a clean tool.

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Use of Sofft Tools With Other Mediums

Although Sofft Tools were created primarily to work with pan pastels, they’re actually pretty versatile. Artists have used them with mediums including watercolors, acrylic paints, hard or soft traditional pastels and charcoals, so if you like to dabble in a range of mediums you might find a whole lot of creative uses for them.

If you use pan pastels and soft pastels together you’ll find that all the Sofft tools work well with soft pastel pigment on the surface just like they do with the pan pastels they were designed for. If you’ve been using soft pastels for a long time you’ll appreciate the ability to integrate pan pastels into your soft pastel work rather than having to replace your soft pastels completely.

Summary

Just as an oil painter has an array of brushes and painting knives, so too the pan pastel artist has a wide range of tools. At the heart of these tools are the four Sofft Knives and eight Art Sponges: 12 different ways to get the pastel pigment from pan to page and for working with it once it’s there. It’s a nice range of choices, and one that will almost always provide you with exactly the right tool for the job.

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CHAPTER 4

TECHNIQUES  

The effective techniques to use with pan pastels are of course a function of their format (pans of pigment rather than sticks), consistency (very soft and color-rich), and of the available tools (Sofft Knives, Art Sponges, Shapers and Applicators).

Applying Pigment

 

The most basic technique with pan pastels is simply using a Sofft Knife or Art Sponge to pick up a color and put it down on the painting surface. To do

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this, you simply wipe the tool on the pan pastel you want to use 2-3 times, applying gentle pressure. This ‘loads’ the sponge (whether it’s on the head of a Sofft Knife or it’s a hand-held Sofft Art Sponge) with pigment, ready to be transported to the painting surface. Then you just wipe or rub the pigment onto the painting surface, again using gentle pressure, though of course you might want to vary the pressure to get different effects.

Note that if you wipe a Sofft Knife, Art Sponge or other tool more than 2-3 times on the surface of a pan pastel you’ll start to get loose dust appearing on the surface of the pan. This is of course a waste of pigment and also creates mess, so stick to just 2-3 strokes.

Once a Sofft Knife or Art Sponge has been loaded with color it’s good for quite a few strokes before it needs to be re-loaded, though of course the color it puts down will get progressively lighter.

After using a Sofft Tool to apply a color you just wipe it a couple of times on a piece of ordinary paper towel to clean it. Then you’re good to use the same Sofft Tool to apply a different color and (somewhat amazingly) you won’t get any color contamination.

Many people who are used to soft pastels find that using a Sofft Knife to apply pigment to their painting surface actually influences their style. Specifically, they say that it makes them looser, more expressive and more ‘painterly.’ Whether you like that change and the results it brings to your finished work is entirely a matter of taste, but suffice to say a lot of people view it as a positive thing. And if you feel like you need to reign in this tendency towards looseness, you can always combine pan pastels with soft pastels and have the best of both worlds.

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Underpainting and Blocking in Color

 

 

Underpainting and blocking in large areas of color on your painting surface is generally something that you want to be able to do as fast as possible. One downside of oil pastels is that doing these things with oil pastels is slow. With soft pastels underpainting and blocking in is already fast, but pan pastels are faster again. That’s mostly because of Art Sponges. They make laying down large areas of one color ridiculously fast – you just pick up a sponge, load it with color, and then wipe in onto the painting surface in broad strokes.

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Mixing Colors

Soft pastels can of course only be mixed once they’re on the painting surface, not before. That’s different from working with wet paints, where mixing colors on a palette before applying them to the canvas is a big part of the process.

Pan pastels can be mixed on the painting surface, but they can also be mixed in the pans themselves, similar to wet paints. You just load one color onto a Sofft Knife, then start rubbing it on the pan of your other chosen color using a gentle circular motion. The colors will immediately begin to mix, and you can then transfer the mixed color to your surface.

To clean the surface of a pan after mixing with it you simply wipe it once or twice with a clean Art Sponge; the remaining loose mixed dust on the surface of the pan will come right off.

Wet Washes

While pan pastels already feel sort of like wet paints, you have the option of using them for wet washes if you want to. The manufacturer recommends applying color to the painting surface first, then brushing the wet wash on.

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As for the wash itself, the recommended recipe is a ratio of about 25-50% rubbing alcohol to water, and this does seem to work well.

Art Sponges in particular work well with wet washes. This is because the foam they’re made from is so dense that the liquid doesn't readily soak into and saturate them.

Blending

 

Blending with pan pastels is made easier by the fact that they have such a soft and creamy texture. Sofft Art Sponges are maybe the best tools to blend with. Just put down the two adjacent areas of color, take a clean Art Sponge and start gently blending the border between the two colors. You’ll find that gradations of color are easy to achieve using this method.

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Highlighting

The No.4 Sofft Knife with its pointed head, or the Sofft Shaper with its flexible silicone head, are the best tools for fine work like highlighting.

Layering

Layering with pan pastels isn’t much different to layering with soft pastels, except that you have tools to do it with. Also, as pan pastels are creamier

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than soft pastels, they’re actually easier to glide on over other layers without inadvertently blending the colors. If you think it’s necessary, you can of course use a spray fixative between layers.

Loading Multiple Colors

 

 

You can load Sofft Tools – particularly Art Sponges – with more than one color to achieve interesting and unique effects. This is of course something you just can’t do with soft pastels. When loading an Art Sponge with multiple colors you just need to ensure that you load the lighter colors first. This is an unpredictable technique but one that’s a lot of fun to experiment with.

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Erasing

 

Pan pastels erase very well using just an ordinary vinyl eraser. An art gum eraser is still a good idea as you can shape them into fine lines and points very easily, allowing you to exercise a lot of control over what you’re erasing. However, if all you have is a vinyl eraser it’ll do a very good job.

Using Pan Pastels With Harder Pastels

There’s no reason you can’t use pan pastels with hard pastels or pastel pencils, just like you would use them with soft pastels. Harder pastels are of course better for initial sketching and for details, so just as with soft pastels, the combination is an effective one.

Summary

Working with pan pastels and Sofft Tools is generally very easy. If it’s soft pastels that you’re used to then you’ll need to learn how to translate the techniques you’ve learnt to use with soft pastels, but most people find that to be a quick and painless process. Once you’re used to using pan pastels with Sofft Tools you’ll more than likely feel that pan pastel techniques are either as easy as with soft pastels or a little (or even a lot!) easier.

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CHAPTER 5

MESS, STORAGE, TRANSPORT ETC.

Artistic mediums are usually thought of mainly in terms of their capacity for expression; that is, how well they’re able to communicate the ideas and images in a particular artist’s head. The reality, though, is that practical issues (like how long it takes to clean up after a session, or how easy it is to throw your art materials in the trunk of your car for a weekend away) are also important, particularly if you’re a hobby artist who isn’t able to devote a huge amount of time and energy to your art.

Maybe that’s one reason photography is so popular – you never have to clean anything!

Soft pastels have a lot of fans, but that’s in spite of the fact that they’re messy, and also it’s not easy to transport either the medium or the finished artworks.

Happily, this is another area where pan pastels shine. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of pan pastels here.

Mess

First, because you don’t have to actually touch pan pastels, your hands don’t get as messy as with some other mediums. There’s no need to wear gloves, and you don’t generally need to keep wiping your fingers while you work.

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Second, because pan pastels are so creamy, they don’t throw off a lot of airborne particles like soft pastels and chalks do. They tend to stick to the painting surface better, so you don’t have to continually shake loose dust off your surface. This is an advantage that oil pastels share, but they’re not water-soluble, while pan pastels are.

Third, clean-up with pan pastels is easy: at the end of a session you just throw all the Sofft tools you’ve used (micropore sponge heads and all) into a sink of warm soapy water, give them a gentle wash, rinse them off with running water, squeeze the sponge parts to get rid of the excess moisture and then let them air dry.

Note that before stacking and screwing together your pan pastels after you finish a session it’s a good idea to get rid of any excess dust on the pans. To do this just hold them over a trashcan (or take them outside), turn them over, and give them a gentle tap on the underside. This causes any loose dust that’s left on the pan surface to fall off.

All told, pan pastels score well on the mess scale. They don’t create a lot of mess, and any that they do create can be cleaned up pretty easily.

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Storage and Transport

Storing and transporting pastel sticks like soft and hard pastels can be tricky. Something like a tackle box is fine for just storing them, but if you want to transport them you’ll need to put them in something that will stop them from moving around. One trick is to fill a container with rice and then push the stick into the rice, as this keeps them safe and separate and deals with any dust that they shed too.

With pan pastels transport is blessedly easy. The pans stack and screw together, leaving you with a light cylinder of plastic about the same size as a mailing tube. Colofin also make plastic storage jars which are stackable and which screw together with the pans into which you can put some of your tools.

If you like to work en plein air (that is, outside), pan pastels are great: they pack up quickly and are compact and robust.

There are also palette trays available and the beauty of them is that you are able to spread your colors out for using and storing. They are also stackable and include a tray cover.

Necessity for Spray Fixative

Fixative is a something of a vexed issue with soft pastels. On one hand it preserves and protects your finished work, and if you don’t use it, some pigment will fall off the painting surface every time it gets bumped. But on the other hand it dulls the vibrant colors that make pastel paintings look so

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good in the first place. It’s a bit of a “damned if you do, and if you don’t” type of situation.

So, is this another area where it’s advantage: pan pastels? Yes! A side-benefit of the “less dust” property of pan pastels is that there’s little or no need to use a spray fixative on your finished artworks. Accidental knocks and bumps are much less likely to cause a pan pastel painting to shed dust.

Summary

Inevitably pan pastels are going to be compared with soft pastels, as soft pastels are the most similar medium to pan pastels. And when it comes to practicalities such as mess and transport, pan pastels are the clear winner. You may even be able to throw out your air purifier!

©  2010  Emma  Ralph  -­‐  All  Rights  Reserved.          www.paintingwithpastels.com  

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CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

If by this stage pan pastels are sounding pretty compelling, it’s no great surprise! They truly are an exciting new medium with some significant advantages over their closest cousins, traditional soft pastels. Perhaps that’s also not surprising, as while soft pastels have existed in a format that hasn’t changed for hundreds of years, pan pastels were designed very recently using the most up-to-date ideas and technology.

I certainly hope that this book has helped to encourage you to give the pan pastels a try.

Happy painting.

©  2010  Emma  Ralph  -­‐  All  Rights  Reserved.          www.paintingwithpastels.com  

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RESOURCES

To watch video tutorials:

http://www.panpastel.com/learn.html

I do recommend Jerrys Artarama for fast and convenient online art supplies

http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-3668777-10633624