10 Reasons to Love Pastel: Texture!
Reason #7 to love pastel: You can get great texture effects with it! "Fishin', Hopin', Prayin" 8 x 12 inch Mixed Media on Paper Click here to view large or see purchase details I always enjoy using a palette knife to create heavily textured paintings, but I enjoy the process even more when I finish the piece with a couple of layers of pastel (oil or soft pastel work great, but they each have different effects). Click here to view a tutorial on Empty Easel featuring the technique I used for this piece! For the piece above, I started with some photos I had taken on a cold afternoon at a crowded beach. I wanted to capture the cold feeling of the day, so I used cool tones to create the water, painting in the strokes with a palette knife. Once the acrylic dries, it's ready for the pastel, which can be scraped lightly over heavily textured parts or layered in as you would normally use pastel for the smoother areas of the piece. Combining acrylic with p