Week Seven: Pastels & Earth Pigments

I'm now over half way in completing my Creative Health and Wellbeing through Artmarking course with UAL. This week we focused on Social Prescribing and completed a couple of activities using pastels. I really enjoy using pastels as it can feel quite child-like to make marks and blend colours. I treated myself to some Fabriano Tiziano Pastel Paper which has an earthy tone to it, making the colours pop. I'm thinking a lot about the materials that we choose to use for arts and health activities and how this sensory engagement with colour, texture and material alone can be therapeutic, regardless of what we are drawing or making. I'm thinking about the purpose that is served by materials and how important it is to pay attention to details such as the size of paper, or its colour and tone. I'm thinking about the qualities of materials and the emotions that they can bring. For example, I was able to create more dream-like blends of colour with the chalk pastels in comparison to the bold mark making of the oil pastels.

Oil Pastels

It was the first time that I had actually been taught how to use pastels - using light colours first and then the darker or brighter colours on top. I thought about how important it is to show participants the ways in which they can use art materials before letting them experiment and create their artworks. We were shown examples of the Fauvist and Impressionist styles which helped to direct us in the ways in which we used the materials. It was also interesting to learn a little art history along the way too!

Chalk Pastels

I'm used to working within arts engagement programmes that have tight budgets and am often left questioning what could be achieved with higher quality art materials. Would there be greater levels of satisfaction in the artworks created?

Earth Pigments

This week I have also been learning about the creation of soft and hard pastels using earth pigments. Earths have been used as pigments since prehistoric times which blows my mind. I'm thinking alot about the archaeology of colour and the various clays, minerals and metallic oxides that are unique to the geology of a particular place. The earth pigments above are sourced from Jackson's so that I can experiment with the pastel making techniques before going on to explore earth pigments that can be sourced from the East Midlands. I am also questioning if pastels can be achieved with lake pigments too!