A soft pastel is a colored stick used for drawing and painting. Its composition is very simple: a blend of pigments, a filler, and a binder.
There are two main categories: dry pastels (either soft or hard) and oil pastels (oil- or wax-based).
Pastel appears to have been invented in France and Italy at the end of the 15th century. Leonardo da Vinci used it in his work.
It became highly popular in the 17th century, used by many artists such as Charles Le Brun, Robert Nanteuil, and Joseph Vivien. But the 18th century was its true golden age. It reached great prestige thanks to artists like Maurice Quentin de La Tour, known as the prince of pastellists. After the French Revolution, its popularity gradually declined.
It never disappeared completely thanks to artists such as Edgar Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, who continued to use it extensively.
Or a marble slab
If you don't have one, you can use a spatula.
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You can use silicone kitchen molds to give your soft pastels original shapes.
Just like paints, soft pastels are mainly made of a mixture of pigments and a binder, which in this case is gum arabic. This gum can be bought ready-to-use in liquid form in fine arts stores, or in grains, in which case it must be prepared before use.
If you have liquid gum arabic, you can skip this step, since your binder is ready to use.
On the other hand, if you have gum arabic in grain (crystal) form, you need to prepare your gum water.
Pastels are generally presented in a cylindrical shape, but you are free to give them any appearance you like. For example, silicone cake molds allow you to create original shapes. The main thing is to make sure they come out of the mold easily.
If you want to make the “classic” cylindrical shape, get some tape, parchment paper, and a fairly thick marker. The size of the marker will determine the thickness of your future pastels.
