I find quite often that people don't understand the medium of Soft Pastel and seem to compare it to the chalk that children use. This is not so, Soft pastel as an art medium has been around for hundreds of years and many famous artists used pastels and these works still look beautiful hundreds of years later and hang in many of the most prestigious museums and galleries throughout the world. There are pastel paintings from the 16 th century that are still as beautiful today as the day they were painted.
Pastels are a PURE pigment that are formed into sticks with a small amount of binder and have a wonderful luminescence. It has no liquid binder that may cause other media to darken, fade, yellow, crack or blister with time. Good quality artist pastels are as costly as artist quality paints in other mediums, so it is not a "cheap" medium to work in. Pastels can either be purchased by the single stick or in sets. The paper or board used for pastel painting also is comparable in cost to good artist canvases.
Some famous artists who used soft pastels were: Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Eugene Delcroix, Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Jean Francois Millet, Jean-Baptist-Simieion Chardin, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Edward Munch, James McNeil Whistler, Jean-Etienne Liotark, Rosalba Carriera, Leonardo Da Vinci, Auguste Rodin, William Rothenstein and James Whistler.
So there you go, more information about Soft pastel than you really wanted to know.
:) Have a great day.Some information taken from the following sites: http://www.bulimbaartstudio.com.au/famous-pastel-artists ,http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/drawing/pastel-drawings.htm
