The vibrancy of the pigments, their endurance and easy application, are the medium’s strongest assets, and the reason that this oldest of materials has been in constant use over the millennia.
To make a stick of pastel, a little clear binder holds the pure fine-ground mineral pigments together well enough for an artist to hold and apply to paper or board. Varying amounts of binder make sticks of different degrees of hardness, each with its own uses. These are dry pastels, also called soft pastels (and sometimes, erroneously, ‘chalk’ pastels even though they contain no chalk). Pigments mixed with an oil base and formed into sticks are ‘oil’ pastels and are an entirely different medium.
An infinite range of colour is achieved by blending the natural ultramarines, viridians, ochres in many light and dark variations from yellow through red to purple. Many of the new pigments used are synthetically created