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Posted: July 10, 2012

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Cheap Pastels

~Anjalena Jul 10, 2012

I've never really used pastels before so please forgive my ignorance here.

I bought a little $5 box of Artist's Loft soft pastels and a few of them seem to be so hardly packed that they barely make any mark on the paper. I can get a little color off them them they just start sliding across the paper without making any mark at all. And then examining the pastel where I was using it, it looks kinda dark and shiny there.

Is there anything I can do to make these pastels usable at all? I know sometimes there are workarounds or fixes for different things in life. Before I just threw them away, I thought I'd ask.

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~narutokunobessed Jul 10, 2012 Student General Artist

Try prismacolors nupastels.

~Anjalena Jul 10, 2012

Thanks! I'll give those a try.

~narutokunobessed Jul 12, 2012 Student General Artist

If you want a bit more expensive and the best one my teacher uses, she recommends the Rembrandts. She reccomended use drawing with the Nupastel first as a sketch, and then use Rembrandts to color.

*MultimediaPanda Jul 10, 2012 Student General Artist

try filing them down with a nail file or sand paper, if that doesn't work, the problem is that their cheap. You get what you pay for.

~Anjalena Jul 11, 2012

I am still going to try the sand paper you mentioned. I just haven't had a chance to sit down with them yet. Too busy with school stuff. I checked this page during a break but now I've got to get back to work. Blargh.

~Anjalena Jul 10, 2012

Thanks Panda. I'll try that out.

~CinderBlockStudios Jul 10, 2012 Professional Traditional Artist

I'm not sure if I fully understand the problem your having. It could be that you don't fully understand the way pastels work. Although I'm not sure I could explain things...

~Anjalena Jul 10, 2012

Forgive me if I'm taking it wrong but your answer sounds condescending and mean. As far as how pastels work, I did already say that I've never used them before. But they don't seem overly complicated to use in a basic, drawing sort of way. You drag it across paper, yes, much like in the way of charcoals? It crumbles slightly leaving bits of itself behind on the paper. Most of them do this just fine. But I have 3 of them that don't. Is there something more I'm missing?

~MrBonecracker Jul 11, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

try to use a rough paper. so the abrasion is higher and you´ll get more pigments on the paper.

but i guess your pastels are just too cheap

~Anjalena Jul 11, 2012

Thanks for the help.

Yeah, I think they were just too cheap too. The paper I'm using is a good quality, medium weight art paper. So it does have a nice texture to it.

See, what happened is my sister bought them and gave them to me. I said up there that I bought them because it wasn't really important at the time who bought them. And she mostly bought them for us to color our hair which is why she got cheap ones. But they were sitting there and I just wanted to use them on paper so I decided to try them out and ended up finding those 3 that won't work.

But they've got my curiosity going artistically so when I get some extra money, I'm going to go buy some better quality pastels to use for drawing.

I'll keep these for the hair thing.

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