Pastel

Pastel is a coloured drawing material in the form of a stick, made of pure coloured pigment mixed with a minimal amount of a binder that holds it together. Because the pigment is scarcely diluted, pastel gives extraordinarily pure, bright and lightfast colours, and its velvety matte surface has a special softness. Pastel can be worked as line, hatching and layering tones, or as an area, rubbing the pigment with a finger or stump for soft transitions. Since the particles merely lie on the surface, the finished work is fragile and needs fixing and glazing under glass. Pastel occupies a middle ground between drawing and painting, so its works are called "pastels" and are counted among both graphics and painting. The technique flourished in the eighteenth century, when Rosalba Carriera and Maurice Quentin de La Tour created brilliant pastel portraits. In the nineteenth century Edgar Degas raised pastel to new heights, combining it with monotype and achieving vibrant colour in his scenes of dancers. Ukrainian artists also used pastel in portraiture and landscape. A distinction is made between soft, hard and oil pastel, each with its own expressive possibilities.