The Secrets to Drawing: Soft Pastels
Lesson Description
Lesson Twenty of The Secrets to Drawing Course introduces students to the expressive and vibrant medium of soft pastels. Soft pastels are known for their rich, velvety texture and intense, luminous colors, making them ideal for creating dramatic, colorful, and textured artwork. In this lesson, students learn techniques for layering, blending, and building color, and apply these skills to create a detailed landscape drawing featuring rocks, a cliff, and waves on gray drawing paper.
Introduction to Soft Pastels
The lesson begins by exploring the qualities that make soft pastels a dynamic medium. Unlike oil pastels, soft pastels have a chalk-like texture that allows for delicate blending and smooth transitions. They produce vibrant, saturated colors and can be layered easily to build depth and dimension. Matt Fussell emphasizes that soft pastels are highly versatile, allowing artists to combine expressive, painterly strokes with fine, controlled details.
Students are encouraged to explore the medium freely, experimenting with blending, layering, and mark-making to achieve a wide range of effects. Soft pastels are ideal for landscapes, as they can convey both the subtle gradations of light and the bold contrasts of natural features.
Working on Gray Paper
Gray drawing paper is used in this lesson to provide a neutral mid-tone background. This allows both light and dark colors to stand out effectively, enhancing contrast and creating a sense of depth. Highlights can be applied with light-colored pastels, while darker colors provide shadows and structure. Matt demonstrates how gray paper simplifies the process of judging values, helping students place highlights and shadows accurately to create a realistic and compelling landscape.
Techniques for Layering and Blending
Layering and blending are central techniques when working with soft pastels. Students learn to apply base layers lightly, gradually building intensity to achieve vibrant and harmonious color. By layering complementary and analogous colors, they can create nuanced variations that add realism and depth to their work.
Blending is achieved using fingers, blending stumps, or soft cloth, allowing students to create smooth transitions, soft atmospheric effects, and realistic textures. Matt explains how to use blending to suggest the flow of water, the rugged surfaces of rocks, and the volume of the cliff, bringing life and dimension to the landscape.
Creating Texture and Detail
Soft pastels are excellent for rendering texture, which is essential in a landscape featuring rocks, cliffs, and waves. Matt demonstrates how to use short, directional strokes to mimic the rough surfaces of rocks and the vertical planes of the cliff. Layering multiple colors and varying pressure allows students to achieve realistic color variations and depth.
For water and waves, students learn to blend horizontal and curved strokes to capture movement and fluidity. Highlights and reflections are added with lighter pastels to suggest sunlight on the water, while darker tones indicate shadows and depth. This combination of layering, blending, and textural techniques creates a visually rich and dynamic landscape.
Drawing Exercise: Landscape with Rocks, Cliff, and Waves
The primary exercise in this lesson involves creating a detailed landscape drawing using soft pastels on gray paper. Students begin with a light sketch to establish the composition, including the placement of the cliff, rocks, and water. This stage ensures proper proportions and layout before adding color.
Next, students apply base layers to define the general forms and value structure. They then build layers of color, blending and adjusting to capture depth, texture, and realism. Rocks are rendered with subtle color variations to convey rugged surfaces, while the cliff is layered to create volume and perspective. Water and waves are carefully blended to suggest movement and reflection. Students use highlights and shadows strategically to create contrast, enhance depth, and guide the viewer’s eye through the composition.
Benefits of Drawing with Soft Pastels
Drawing with soft pastels teaches students to think in terms of color, value, and texture. The medium encourages expressive mark-making, observation, and careful layering of color. By working with soft pastels, students gain confidence in blending, building vibrant tones, and creating atmospheric effects that enhance the emotional impact of a landscape.
Mastery of Soft Pastels
By the end of Lesson Twenty, students have gained a solid understanding of how to use soft pastels effectively on gray drawing paper. They have learned to layer and blend colors, render textures, and depict light, shadow, and movement in a landscape. The drawing of rocks, a cliff, and waves serves as a practical application of these skills, demonstrating both technical proficiency and expressive artistry. Mastery of soft pastels expands students’ creative possibilities, allowing them to create rich, vibrant, and textured drawings that capture the beauty and complexity of the natural world.
Lesson Materials
Soft pastels, toned drawing paper.
Lesson Resources
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Course Curriculum
Founder of The Virtual Instructor, artist and teacher. Matt makes learning art easy to understand and enjoyable.
I really love this drawing/painting. Thanks for the detailed lesson!
Love this tutorial I’m doing. It would be great to have access to the photo as a reference and to have a photo of the color pastels used for it before beginning it. Thanks for all those great lessons!
Hi Hélène,
I agree, the photo reference would help with this one. Unfortunately, this one is unavailable. All of the references used in Pastel Landscape Mastery are available, so you can continue practice there if you want to go deeper with pastels. Here’s a link to the course…http://thevirtualinstructor.com/members/pastel-landscape-mastery/
Thanks for your answer. Of course, I saw the pastel module! I planned to study it because your subjects are all wonderful. Thanks for those courses.
Soft and Oil pastels are so different, but I really like how you can just blend the colors with your fingers. Nothing feels better than blending out a blue sky or red and yellow sunset with your fingers! I never thought pastels would have been something I enjoyed as I started my art journey, and surprisingly they are something I enjoy the most. These videos are so helpful!
Hi Really love the soft pastels video. However, I really struggle to get the crisp white highlights such as tose on the breaking waves. My whites simply blend. Is it the quality of my soft pastels or am I missing something.
I have the exact same problem Andrew and i find no answer to this anywhere. i have purchased white pastel from several brands, still no progress. have no idea what’s the problem.
Hi Guys,
Sometimes it’s not the pastel but the surface. There is a limit to how many layers you can apply. If your paper is smooth and doesn’t have enough tooth (texture), then your applications may not be as strong.
This has been a fantastic lesson like all of them, I started off doing your secrets to drawing course as I love black and white drawings and I still do but it’s good to use different mediums as you grow as an artist 🙂
I enjoyed the coloured pencil lesson as well as the oil and soft pastel lessons in this course which has now made me want to.progress and do the coloured pencil course and the pastel landscapes course plus the newer one portraiture 🙂
Thanks Matt for all these wonderful courses and lessons tc
Wow! Thanks Christine!
Your welcome Matt seriously you are a fantastic teacher and your videos are brilliant,your passion for art always comes through and it is infectious,I’ve not done these practicals yet as I need to do them at my table and my back is not very good at the moment but I always watch the videos 1St write some notes, I know you do ebooks to go with lessons which are fab by the way but sometimes you say extra things in the videos and me doing notes helps it sink in a bit better because the meds I take each day and my condition it affects my short term memory.
But you make it so it’s easy to understand and I’m actually better than art more than other things say for example maths etc my mind goes blank and with the way my head is bit art just seems to be my thing now and if it wasn’t for my chronic back and sciatica and Fibromyalgia I would not have found art so it’s a positive thing to come out of a bad thing.
Plus it helps me take my mind of my constant pain.
Once again Thank you Matt for all the hard work you do to help us.
Chronic back and sciatica pain I meant to say *
Hi – do you need to use a fixative over soft pastels? internet reference yields a variety of answers, ranging from yes (but the colors will alter) to no (but the colors will fade).
also, do you wear a dust mask when working with soft pastels to prevent inhalation of potential harmful dust particles?
Thanks again for all your great tutorials.
Hi Deborah,
I personally don’t use fixative for my pastel drawings. I don’t like how it makes the values darker. If you are a member, you may find this Member’s Minute episode helpful…http://thevirtualinstructor.com/members/members-minute-111115/
I also don’t use a mask when I work…probably should though.
Yes i read about that and I have asthma so it made sense for me to wear one, I’ve only dabbled a couple of times with pastels but it wasn’t a lot.
Now though I’m going to do his pastel landscapes ☺
Hi matt,
I wonder if you can provide the photo references that you used in the videos for members to download. I really want to try to draw the same picture by following your steps in videos.
Hi Matt, I was wondering if you could help me out with an issue I am having using soft pastels. I am trying to do clouds as you do in the drawing, but am having issues with my whites. I am using Canson Mi-Teintes paper, the rough side, and am having issues when I am trying to draw the outlines of the clouds over an application of light blue. I very gently will rub the blues into the paper as to not damage the tooth, but when I apply the white it is extremely faint if not muddied by the blue so the clouds don’t “Pop”. Should I try a harder pastel or White Conte crayon? Would that make a difference? Any tips for applying white over blue? Perhaps a darker tinted paper? Thanks for any advice!
Hi Steven,
The brand of pastels may be affecting the result. Brands with strong pigmentation should cover easily. If you try and cover with a harder pastel, you may find it more difficult. Harder pastels have a lower concentration of pigment.
what are the differences between the oil pastel and soft pastel? as i have watched those videos they are pretty much the same, you put them layer by layer? can you please more specific when or where is suitable to use this individual.
Try not to blow the excess pastel as this makes more dust which can be inhaled. Tapping the paper on its end will loosen any excess pastel and it will then drop straight down.
I was told that pastels are toxic and that I should wear surgical gloves to apply and blend them. What do you know about this?
First off, I love your teachings. I am 64 years old and have never drawn in my life. Through your teachings I have found that I can do it. Now for my issue with this lesson. I seem to be having problems getting my whites to pop. I don’t seem to get the coverage that you do. They just seem to blend It may be my paper or my pastels. I am using Strathmore toned medium surface paper and my soft pastels are Master’s Tough oil free soft pastel sticks. Can you tell me, is it my products or me?
Hi Mariann,
It could be a little of both your pastels and the surface. If the surface of the paper does not have a strong enough tooth to accept many layers of pastels, then your “white” layer may not be accepted by the paper. Master’s Loft pastels are not the most pigmented out there which could be the second half of the problem. You may try another brand that is a little higher quality.
Dear Matt,
I love your work, but most of all the way which you are able to pass your knowledge to us. Very pleased with your course and your material. thank you
I really want to be able to do this. Matt, you are amazing.
Questions: Should one do soft pastels vertical (like on an easel) or horizontal (on desk). I used to do primarily soft pastels all through high school nearly 40 years ago now and don’t really remember which to do. Also, how to use brush without smearing has me in a quandry. As I’m unpacking I’m finding set after set of soft pastels so I probably ought to actually start using them again. Can’t really afford Mi Tientes paper at the moment, any alternative suggestions?
Hi Bearstarfire,
You can work with pastels on an easel or on a flat surface. Either approach is fine. Choose which feels most comfortable to you. I use a drafting brush which consists of soft fibers and minimizes smearing. The Mi-Teintes paper is not cheap, but also not expensive compared to other papers. I often receive questions regarding replacements or alternatives. I wish there were easy answers for this. However, each paper has its own characteristics that are not easily replicated by other papers. You could use Strathmore’s gray sketch paper, but this paper is limited in tooth, meaning less layers can be added. You could also consider using cold press watercolor paper. But this paper is typically too strong with tooth, and mostly comes in white or black. So, if you choose a different paper, some concessions must be made.
Your drawing is stunning. Now I want to buy soft pastels ❤️
Hello. I just had a question about using the fingers to blend everything. With oil pastels you talk about making sure to keep the oil pastels clean by rubbing them on another sheet of paper. If you use your fingers to blend everything using soft pastels, do you have to keep your fingers clean as much as you have to do when using oil pastels? I think of my question and think about how silly it might be. Common sense tells me I should be doing that. Can I use paper towels to keep my fingers clean? Or maybe just rub them on a seperate sheet of paper? I’m totally new at this and was just curious. Thanks. I love the courses on your website. Plus, your art pieces are fantastic. One thing that sticks with me is that with this style of drawing you talk about how it’s not about detail in the drawing, but mainly the shapes and values of the colors that create the illusion of what you see in the photo or outdoor scenery (if I decide to draw from real life). From now on I will definitely be looking at pastel works of art in a different way when I go to any of my local art galleries. 🙂