Once, when we visited Florence, we saw this young woman absorbed in painting a copy of Boticelli’s Venus while throngs of tourists dashed by. Only a few stopped to watch. The artist is using soft dry pastels, a version of highly pigmented chalks. Find out more about pastels.

Pastels are the closest you can get to painting with pure pigments. Unlike other media, they only consist of pigment and binder. The strength and weakness of pastels arise from this very fact.

On the one hand, they can produce the most intense colors, are easy to pack for a painting session anywhere, and require no tools to apply. Of course, you can use tools if you want (Your fingers are good blending tools, but there are others especially made for pastels).

Lacking a medium like oil or acrylic solutions, pastels adhere to surfaces like canvas, paper, wood, or even cement physically and not chemically. So, a pastel painting can abrade readily when not properly stored or framed, and degrade rapidly when exposed to sun or humidity.

I believe they appeal to many artists because there is a directness to applying pastels (like drawing with charcoal or soft pencils) and a seductiveness in the rich colors they can produce.

Here’s a couple I did in a painting class:

I once thought of remembering one Paris Autumn by doing pastel sketches of leaves I picked up from places I visited. The idea came to me after I nearly slipped on a decaying leaf I stepped on. From then on, I began noticing fallen leaves in the vibrant colors of autumn. They were everywhere, flying off of trees much faster than ubiquitous green sweepers (trucks that sweep the streets of Paris) could whisk them out of sight. Paris is much like other cities in autumn. Deciduous trees shed leaves to prepare for spring renewal. A few of the dozen or so I sketched:

I confess to being ignorant of what trees these leaves fell from, but I took note of where I picked them up. A few were from Square Jean XXIII at the back of the Cathedrale de Notre Dame. One just flew through the window of our rented apartment. The rest were on streets in or around the Seine, Ile St.Louis, Jardin de Plante on the left bank, Opera Garnier, and the Institut du Monde Arabe. I remember that Paris Autumn well because of those leaves.

You’ll find a couple more pastels on A Writer Dabbling in Art-Making