Pastel Painting Tip #4 - Breaking Soft Pastels (on purpose!)

For more info on soft pastels, go to http://www.howtopastel.com
To read my blog post related to this video, go to: http://www.howtopastel.com/2014/06/pa...

It's difficult enough to get going on a pastel painting without having the impediment of perfect soft pastels! In this video, I'll show you what I do to help prevent that psychological barrier - I break the pastels. Naturally, you don't need to use this tip with half sticks of soft pastels, they are already ready to use. When you use both the side and the tip of your pastel for creating, breaking them helps immensely.

I have shown breaking the pastels quickly. You can also run your fingernail around the pastel, scoring where you want the break and that will help make a cleaner break. Usually though, I don't have the patience to do that and sometimes, even that doesn't prevent pastel crumblings. Removing the paper can help too but again, that's not always a guarantee of a clean break. Different pastel brands react differently. The main thing is to get in there and break them!

By the way, the part of the video showing me breaking the pastels had to be done in one take (only one box of pastels on hand to break!) so there are a couple of things I may have changed but I think it's pretty understandable. Let me know if you have a question though or if something isn't clear.

One more thing, usually, before I break the pastels, I'll sort the box into values but in this video, I wanted to show you the brand new box and get right into the dirty deed! To see my tip about sorting soft pastels into values go to    • Pastel Painting Tip #3 - Sorting Soft Past...  

In this exercise, I am using Unison's starter kit of 18 soft pastels.

If you have any questions about the process or anything to do with soft pastels, please leave them below and I will be sure to answer :-)

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