Choosing Pastels with Irina Klimova

Irina Klimova, a pastel painting instructor and author of theonline course "Create Your First Pastel Drawing", talks about her favourite materials.

Unison set of 120 half sticks is my favourite! This set is especially good to start the exploration of the pastel medium. The palette here is quite large and universal, although one can never find a perfect selection of hues in just one set. One always has to purchase individual sticks of pastels too, and perhaps it's for the better. Ideally, a pastelist should have a range of both soft and harder pastels of different brands. Unison pastels are bright and saturated, the pigment is soft enough to allow smooth blending; they also work well on sanded surfaces and in strokes that are made by holding the pastel on its side. They don't crumble and last for a long time.

It's important to vary one's palette with more complex hues. I love the green hues by Rembrandt. One can go to an art shop, find a stand with individual pastels and pick the darkest ones; they are forever insufficient in one's collection. I also like their green greys: they are good for objects in the distance. For example, the trees in the far distance are normally not bright green, rather misty blue. Rembrandt pastels are on the harder side of the range. They are not so easy to blend. However, this hardness is ideal for drawing small details. Rembrandts are also good for use on sanded surfaces: they don't release too much pigment so the layers of pastel remain transparent, not too greasy or too thick. They allow the artist to layer colours on top one another until the required hue is produced achieving the effect of optical blending when pigments are not being blended mechanically, but only visually.

Terry Ludwig is another brand that I certainly recommend trying out. Regretfully, it is not for sale in this country, but it is available for order at jacksonart.com. One could start with the 14-colour set called "Best Loved Basics". It is small but very useful. It includes beautiful complex hues from the different segments of the colour wheel, which will enrich your palette. Terry Ludwig also offers fantastic sets collected by master pastelists – basically, these sets represent their favourite palettes. If you like artworks of a certain painter, one of those sets will be a great cheat sheet and a perfect ready-to-go set of colours. In my perception, the pastels of this brand are a bit softer than Unison, do not crumble, have excellent opacity and a superb range of hues.  This brand is the first choice with American pastelists. It allows me to work the way I love best: combining blending and laying the pigment with the side of a stick.

Schmincke is a brand of extra-soft pastels. It is not for novices. So I don't recommend buying it in sets. It's better to purchase individual sticks of light and medium values. The lights have to be extra-soft because the highlights, for example, are always put on top of all the preceding layers and need to cover them.  Schmincke pastels are simply indispensable for this purpose. Besides, the palette of this brand is very light and soft; the darks are there but they contain quite a lot of chalk binder that makes them look lighter and not very deep. Schminckes are perfect for airy compositions with flowers and plants.

If you need dark blues or dark greens, look for Sennelier handmade series. Their small marine set is wonderful and a great help. I also adore their "Paris collection" set.

Grey. Why grey, one would think. In other mediums like oil and watercolour, we use grey very rarely. Not so in pastel! Greys are the modifiers that, when layered over the vibrant colours, can make them look more complex and pleasing. Pastel manufacturers offer a wide range of ready-made coloured neutrals these days, which saves us, painters, from inventing new hues. Blue greys, grey violets, grey pinks, grey greens actually form the largest part of my collection. Mount Vision pastels come in particularly handy here. Their "Thunderstorm greys" set is a treasure! The sticks are very thick, big and stretch for a long time, so a couple of friends can buy the set together, break the sticks in halves and use them with pleasure.