 Hi guys, welcome to Monnaie Cafe. Today I'm going to be giving a lesson that was inspired by a lot of your questions. So many people are asking about the different types of pastels, different hardness, softness, also about the different types of papers and surfaces you can use with pastels. And these were some of the same questions that I asked when I first got started. It took me a lot of research to finally get answers and to explore the different mediums and pastels that I could use. So I thought it would be very beneficial to go ahead and make a video about this that should help a lot of you guys. So anyway, we're going to get to it and I think you're going to learn a lot. Let's go. All right, so now we're going to get started. First, talking about the different types of pastel surfaces. I have not exhausted all of them by any means, but I do have a pretty good sample that is pretty representative of some of the common ones that people use. First, I just have a regular piece of newsprint here. This is going to represent how not to do your pastel paintings. I do know people who have done some pastel paintings that on surfaces that do not have a sanded surface and they've done some beautiful work. But typically, this is not the best surface. The pastels will just fall right off and you can't get any layers. I'm going to be doing an example of some pastels on each one of these. So after we get through talking about the basic papers, this paper right here has a really good grit, a very coarse surface to it. I actually have a real piece of sandpaper here that you would just buy at the hardware store. And this is a fine grit, but just kind of to compare it, you can you can hear how rough that is. This is very rough. I think you'd probably wear out your pastels very quickly if you did it on regular hardware store sandpaper. But you notice you can hear the grit on this one too. Not as rough as that, but this type is considered a pretty coarse pastel paper. And what this is, is La Carte pastel paper. It's made by the company and I think I'm even saying this name wrong. I think it's a French name. Senniliers have always said it. I love their pastels as well. I have some of them that I will show you. But this particular pad here comes with various shades. Okay, so you've got a variety. It's not cheap. I can't remember how much it is. I'll try to research that and put it in the video. But oh, I love that. That kind of a gray green blue there. Really pretty. But anyway, I happen to really like this pastel surface. Some people think it's a little too rough. But if you like an impressionistic style, this one lends itself towards that. The next one that I have up here, this is the Me Tiente's Touch. It's made by Kansen. And it also comes in a pad. This has 12 sheets in this pad. Me Tiente's Touch. And it is, I'm almost out of this. I wanted to experiment and play around with it because I was curious about this. Because I typically was not a fan of Kansen. Kansen used to make a pastel paper, I think they still do, that they sell in most, I would say crafty stores. And they don't have a tooth to them at all. They have a little texture to the paper. But it was not my favorite pastel surface. So they came out with this new type. And it does, this is a black piece out of that pad, have a little bit of a sandy surface to it. Not as much as this one. It's a little bit smoother. And this is a nice surface as well. Now I'm going to move up to my favorite surface right here, other than I like my homemade. I'm going in order of my preferences, I think. This is close to the top of my preference, if not tied with this one. But this right here is UART paper. I think I have a little bit on the back of it here that shows the grit. Yeah, it's 400 grit. I have a bigger piece of it here. You can buy it in smaller sheets. I actually buy it in really big sheets and cut it up myself. So this is the 400 grit. And this is also pretty sanded, but it's not as coarse as this one. The great thing about this is you can get down a lot of layers with it. You can use water with it. You can use watercolor. Fixative works very well on it. If I recall, I'm not quite sure. I'll have to check. I'm not sure if you can add water to the LaCarte paper or not. I'm thinking you can't, but I'll try to put that in the video, my answer after I research it. So anyway, we've got these in order of my favorites. And then this is the ones that many of you may have seen the videos where I make my own surface. This is just a piece of mat board. I did a little teeny one as a sample. And it's where I make my own pastel surface and apply to the board. Again, I buy these boards big and I cut them to standard sizes. And then I mix up my concoction here and I'll put a link right up here to link to the video of how to make your own pastel surface. It's just mixed one to one ratio. I won't go into all the detail of the names of these products because you can click the video to find out. And when you do that, you can apply that to this whatever surface, whether it's Gator board or mat board, and create your own pastel surface. This one only has one coating on it, so it's not quite as sanded. Disadvantage to this is you can't get quite as many layers on this as you can on the UART. So that's why I'm kind of tied with these two because sometimes I just really love the UART. So there's a little bit of an example of some of the different paper types. Oh, actually, I have one more to show you here. This is Ampersand Pastel Board. I actually really like this. And when I was going through making this video, I was like, why don't I use this more because I've done some paintings that I really loved on this. And it too will come in different colors and different sizes. Now, what's an advantage on this one is it's already on a board, okay? It's a hard board. And sometimes when you're doing your paintings on these papers, you know, they're flimsy or they're a little bit, you have to protect them a little bit more from getting bent or damaged. Whereas if you're on a board or even if you make your own surface on this matte board, you got this neat board. Sometimes even after I'll do a painting, I like to just sit it up on a little stand before I frame it. And you can do that with the boards. You can't always do that with these because they'll, in time, they'll kind of bend and warp. So that's the advantage of these two. They're actually on a sturdy surface, okay? So now we've got an example of some of the different types of pastel papers and surfaces. So now what we're going to do is we're going to talk a little bit about the different pastels, the absolutely beautiful medium that I love so much. And I can tell I have a lot of pastel fans that visit my channel. So let's get started and learn some about these beautiful pastels. Okay, before I actually apply some of the pastels and show how they behave, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the different varieties. I have a few here that I have accumulated over the years. And there are so many different types of pastels that I surely won't be able to talk about them all, but I can break it down a little bit. And I'm actually going to provide a link in the about section that will give you more information about different pastels. First of all, we are dealing on my channel anyway with soft pastels. I don't deal with oil pastels. I know a lot of artists do some beautiful work with them, but I've never, I've never been a fan. So I am specifically talking about soft pastels. And also we've got within the soft pastel family, we have a range from hard to soft with some that are medium in between as far as their hardness and their softness. And the difference between hard and soft pastels is how they behave on the paper. Because we're working with a sanded surface, hard pastels, because they're hard, won't get into the deeper grooves of the surface as easily as the soft ones will. So soft ones, this is a soft pastel here, they very quickly fill up the tooth or the depth of the paper. So you can't get as many layers with soft pastel as you can hard pastel. Well, that would sound like, wow, why don't we just use hard pastels all the time? Well, another thing they're not, you'll see when we apply some of these, they're just not as brilliant. And they don't cover the same way that a soft pastel does. So this little fine balance about how to use them. And it's something that just gets easier in time the more you work with them. That's why typically, though, you will see some artists when they'll do an initial sketch to do a layout or just the composition sketch, they typically will use a harder pastel because they're not in danger of filling up that tooth that they're later going to cover over. So that's just a little difference between the hard and the soft pastels. Now also we have different, within soft pastels, we have different things that we can use. We have the actual sticks that we can use. We also have pastel pencils. They make sets of pencils that are good for fine detail work. Now if you're into more impressionistic art, you don't do a whole lot of fine detail work, you can get a lot done with just a harder pastel and you don't need that. Sometimes these are handy to have, but not always. And I find that in general, these are not really soft. They are, I would say, a medium to a hard pastel in the pencil. The other challenge with pencils and hard pastels is that once you have gotten, say, your painting almost complete, if you go back to try to apply a hard pastel or a pencil over top, they sometimes won't even show up very well because you've already filled up the tooth of the painting. So that's again something that comes with experience. So I thought I would, oh I wanted to show one other little set that I have here. I'll go through my different sets before I show them here. I'll show them in the actual boxes. I've saved some of the boxes that I've used. This is another type before I get into the basic soft pastels that I've worked with a little bit for fun. I actually use it for my art student. It's called Neo Color Water-Soluble Color Wax Pastels. Now these are not, I wouldn't say, artist quality, but they're kind of fun to play around with sometimes. The other neat thing about these is that you can add water to them. You can actually use them on watercolor paper. So this is more of a fun thing. I don't usually use these for any professional paintings I'm doing, but it's just another product that some say is in the pastel family. Okay, but again, I don't use these a lot for serious pieces. Okay, so now I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the different pastels I'll show you that I actually have sets of. And I'll try to give you a few other name brands of ones that are well known. My favorite by far, I don't have the box for it, but I'll share an image, is Terry Ludwig's. Terry Ludwig's are, I think some artists that love them like I do call it their workhorse. They use a lot of them because they are so brilliant with color. They're soft and buttery, and their application is just beautiful. And again, or let me stress here, that if you're getting started for the first time, it's like, it's overwhelming. What do I buy? Do I buy soft? Do I buy hard? Do I pencil? What do I do? And I would suggest getting a good, probably medium brand, I'll talk more about it when I get to it, in a set. A set that has a decent range of values of darks and lights and colors. And just play around with that one for a little while. I wouldn't go out and spend a fortune until you find out that this is something you're going to love. And then over time, it's like anything else. You accumulate and you add more, and you eventually get to where you know what are your personal favorites. It's a little different for every artist. So again, Terry Ludwig, I would say is probably my favorite. And then next, I also like that Terry Ludwig is a very soft pastel in the range from soft to hard. That's one of the softers. Also, unison pastels. This was an 18 piece set that I had bought, and it was a good set of various values as well. And oh, actually, I take that back. This was a dark value set. I needed some darker values and you can also buy sets of pastels that aren't just an array of colors. You can buy landscape sets and seascape sets. But sometimes if you just need more darks or you just need more lights, you can buy different sets of pastels. Again, the variety is just endless. But this was a set of darks I bought. Unison is another soft pastel that I really like a lot. It applies. I use a lot of their blues for my skies. Okay, so I love this one too. Another soft pastel that I like is this one is again, it's like the La Carte paper here. It's made by the company Cinelear. And again, I really know I'm butchering that name. And here's the thing. The reason why sometimes I don't have the lingo or the verbiage is I like to stress again that I have never, ever had a pastel class in person. I've never had a watercolor class in person like that. Again, back in my graphic design days, I had some drawing classes and things that went with that major. But I am an example of how you can truly learn so much online by videos. And that's again why I like to give back. So that's why sometimes I don't have the jargon. But I think that's kind of neat. You don't have to. But anyway, this brand I do like a lot. Again, you can get a set. This was a set that I got, a really good assortment set. And it was 80. And you'll have to check the prices because I bought this years ago. But I bought it in what's called half pastels. Let me see if I still have my little insert in here. Yes, I do. It was in a set of half pastels. So then you're getting a bigger variety of colors and values without having to buy the whole stick. You get more bang for your buck, so to speak. But I took them out and I'll do another video sometime on how to organize your pastels. Again, there's lots of different ways to do that as well. But that's just another good education. So again, this was a great set on the side of the box. It shows all of the different colors and the different numbers of each color on this, this variety of pastel. This one too is a pretty soft pastel. I would say it's not as soft as the Unison or the Terry Ludwigs, but it's also a pretty soft pastel. All right, now I'm going to move into, let me think if I can think of some of the other names. Oh, there's one that I don't have the box to find a picture, is Geralt Pastels. This is an artist that I love named Elizabeth Mowry. She uses these. I don't have a big supply of them. I've been waiting until I could afford to buy a big full set. That I just can't wait to get. I would say it's a little bit more in the not quite as soft. It's not a hard by any means, but it's a little bit more medium softness than some of the others that I have spoken of already. So these are gorgeous pastels and I really like them. Another, some of the other names of soft pastels are Mount Vision. I think there's a Great American. So again, so many, but these are just a few of the ones that I really like. Now, going on to one I don't have the box for, but I'll show, find a picture, is Rembrandt Pastels. This was probably one of the first sets that I bought and it is a nice medium type of pastel. It is good for all kinds of different things. So I would suggest Rembrandt's if you're getting started to get a little starter set and kind of play around with that for a while. Now I'm going to move into some of the harder pastels. There are, this is one that I prefer as a hard pastel. It's Prismacolor New Pastel. I have a little supply of these here and they are harder. And again, these are going to be the ones that you would do an initial sketch because they're not going to fill up the tooth of the pastel surface. And another variety of a hard pastel is this Derwent. Hope I'm saying that name correctly too. This is another set of hard pastels that came in a little variety pack here that I sometimes use for initial sketches. And just to lay down a concept drawing, you know, just general things like that. There are other brands of hard pastels out there too, Faber Castell. That's a medium to a hard. But I'd like to point out that there are some that are cheaper. You can get pastels that are cheaper than some of the ones that I've mentioned. But you're going to, you get what you pay for. You're going to not get the vibrancy and color as what I like to call artist quality pastels. The ones that I've shown you thus far are artist quality. And what that means is they have a high ratio of pigment color to the binder. The binder is what holds them together. Otherwise the color would just fall all apart. So they have a mostly color and not a lot of binder. Have you ever, if you're more experienced as a pastel artist, you may have had people say, oh, they come up while you're painting, you know, and they say, oh, is that chalk? And most pastel artists just go eek when you say that because it's absolutely not chalk. Chalk has a whole lot of binder, things that bind it together over color. That's why chalk, if you draw on a chalkboard, it doesn't have a lot of vibrance to your color. It's not a lot of color in it. So that's really what distinguishes the artist's quality from the beginner quality. The beginner quality is not only going to have less color or pigment, it's going to have cheaper pigment as well, not the expensive, really vibrant and beautiful colors that you can get with pastel work. Okay, so that's a general little education about pastels, softness, hardness, quality. And now I'm going to actually apply some of the pastels to the paper so you can get an example of how they behave without having to go out and buy all the stuff. See, that's one of the things I found a challenge when I was first getting started. And one of the reasons that I had to learn online was I couldn't really afford to go to all these classes to learn. I had a life. I had kids. I had a job. And so I had to learn all of these things without spending the extra money that some people have. Thus, I couldn't go out and experiment with all the different pastel types. I didn't have the budget to do that. So that's why I'm wanting to do this video here and show you right here on this video so you can get that education without having to spend the money or be frustrated because you can't see the difference between these. So I'm going to get started with actually putting down some marks on these different surfaces. And then I'll actually do a little bit of a painting to give you an idea of how hard and soft pastels work together. Okay, so this should be fun. All right, so I thought I'd go ahead and point out some of the different pastels I've already talked about. These are the Terry Ludwigs. They have their kind of signature square or rectangular shape to them. And some people are curious about how do I use them? You can use them in a variety of ways. You can use them just to the whole flat surface. You can use corners of them. I often break my pastels to use smaller pieces. And again, this is something that you just learn to feel and things that become custom to you once you figure out how you like to work. So those things just come in time. But these are the Terry Ludwigs. And I've got a variety of some shape or values here. I've got some really dark darks. I love the Terry Ludwigs dark darks. And the next ones over here, I think that we spoke of are unisons. This one popped over here. Unisons have more of a round shape to them. But again, they are also very soft. And notice I've peeled all the labels off of most of them, except a couple of these new pastels. And then I've got, I believe these were the Sennelier. Like again, I'm not sure if I'm even saying that right. I had some more of those I thought. Oh no, these are them over here. And it was that set that I had the little half pastels. This one may not be that one. But they are also the ones that I really, really love a lot. And again, they're not quite as soft as the Ludwigs and the Unisons. And I think these belong over there. The other ones are, this is a brand of pastel that I got early on. And I was trying to remember the names of these. It might have been a Faber-Castell again. I'm not even sure if I'm saying that one right. It was a set that had a big variety. And I actually still have a residue of these left over too. And they actually have a good medium to soft quality about them. These are the Rembrandt's and they have their rounded size. And again, I break them up a lot to do different things that I'm trying to accomplish with them. These are the new pastel, the harder pastels, the ones that I like for a harder pastel. And then these are the Derwent pastels here. They're a little bit too hard for me. I don't like these as much as these. And so now we're just going to apply a little bit. Oh, that's my husband out there on the saw right now. So hopefully you can hear over me. He's a creative fellow himself. And he should have a YouTube channel for all of the projects that he does. Okay, so I'm going to start applying first to the news print. All right, first I'll just go ahead and apply some hard pastels to it. Let me get a color that you can actually see. This is going to be the Derwent right here. Okay. And I'm just going to rub it on here. Get an idea of this. Okay, now I'm also going to do, I don't know if I should do them all at once and then move over. Yeah, I'll stick to one first. Okay, now I'm going to take the other hard pastel that I like better. That is the new pastel. Let me do that one under here. See how that one's already softer? All right, I had to pause for a second because my husband was louder than my voice was with his creative building project outside. This is the new pastel. And you see, this is the reason why I like this one more than the Derwent pastel. And now let's move on to some of the, I went from hard here. Let's go to the medium. These are, I'd say the next in softness or hardness would be the Rembrandt's. Okay, so we'll get some Rembrandt's in here. Get some different colors in here. Okay, so we've got hard, we've got medium. I think I'm just going to do hard, medium and soft on each one because this could take a while. And let's do another Rembrandt. Okay, and now let's go ahead and move into some of the softer ones. I'll do a unison here. Okay, you can already see how much buttery this one looks than that. And I'll do one of these. This is the Geralt, the one that I said I want a whole set out. This is kind of, this actually is between a medium and a soft. That's pretty soft though. And this is the Sennelier. Let me get another one of those, this one. I should really like this one. Okay, you see how pretty these are? While pastels, you can't mix them like acrylics or oils. You actually though, when you combine them a little bit, you get interesting effects, like just between that. That's really pretty. I'm such a color freak. Okay, so now let me go on to some of the softest softs. I did the unison up here. That's a soft, but I'm going to grab one of these Terry Ludwigs. Let me get one of the, let me get this red shade, Terry Ludwigs. And again, one of the main things I use this new print, newsprint for is not for painting on, but to put behind my easel for cleaning them. You see how this one is really dirty? So usually it is on the outsides here and I'll just clean it. But in this case, I'll just go ahead and apply this color. Okay, so these are the really beautiful pastels. You see how bright that is? Now I'm going to move to the La carte paper and I will apply them in the same basic order. So we can kind of compare them. So first of all, with a stirwent, oh wait, I want to go back on this one and show why you don't want to use the newsprint. Let me just show you how, with some soft pastel, let me just try to actually paint something here. I will go into basically painting like a poppy flower or something here. I'll just give them a general shape to a flower. Okay, and let me give it a dark center here. Give it a really dark center. Try to do this quickly. It might not be the best poppy. Already, what has happened here, and this is what I wanted to demonstrate, is that red that I just put down, I want to give it a dark center. It's not letting me. You see, that's not even applying on there. I'm rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. You can't get any darker on there. So there's the example of why you don't want to use newsprint or notebook paper or any kind of drawing paper like that. Okay, next. Now we'll move on and we'll go in with the stirwent and then we'll do the new pastel, and I'll go kind of in the same order. I think we did a rembrandt, maybe another rembrandt. Then over here we did a unison. Which color did I do? I did this one. And you can't really appreciate these until you go back and layer them like we were doing. So that's why it'll be good to kind of, oh, look at this. See these scurral pastels? They're just really beautiful. Okay, now let me do one of the cinneliers or the lecarte, whatever it's called, cinnelier. Oh yeah, gorgeous, love that. And then let me also go ahead and do the terry Ludwigs. Ooh, look at that brightness. Isn't that gorgeous? Okay, so we got hard to medium to soft. Now I'll go in and try to do the same thing. Let's get a little idea of a poppy flower in here. And I'll do a center, same thing, the dark. Should be down here more actually. Give it a little purple in there for interest. And now when I go in to add the other layer, you see how you can immediately see that color there. Now I got a lot of colors falling and flying around in here. That's okay. Overlapping the other. We're getting the idea here. Let me see. I gotta resist the urge to just have a lot of fun here. I kind of need like a nice orange or something in here somewhere. But we get the idea. And this would be like a darker red under here. I have one. And maybe even some cooler. Yeah, there we go. Cooler reds in here like that. Okay, so we get the idea of how the colors behave on this. Now we're going to do the same thing on the Kansan Metian Taste Touch. Trying to work quickly here. Okay, we got a Rembrandt over here. Another Rembrandt. Unison. Grawl. It's in there. And you see how this texture, because it's more coarse, it actually doesn't show the spaces in it. You know, it's not as broken up as the other one. Okay, and now a Terry Ludwig. Okay, and now we'll do a quick idea for a poppy again. I'll try to do these faster. But you see this is actually on black paper. It really looks kind of brilliant right here. So I don't even really need to do the black metal. I can just do some purple there. And then again it will also take the darker color. But it didn't go on as smoothly as this paper over here. Okay, and see how that it's a little bit more muted. The layers are not as good as on this paper. It's actually kind of a good little example for me or study for me to do as well. Okay, and I know I had like some oranges on the outsides. But see this is still a pretty good paper. But see this is just why I love that paper a lot. Again, it's more for... I know some artists who just don't like this paper at all. So it might just be a personal thing with me. Okay, now we're going to move over to the UART paper. Again, this is kind of like a workhorse paper. You can get a lot done with UART paper. And oh, see how beautifully that went on? I got it out of order. Get the blue one first. And see that one too? Versus how spacious it is there and how choppy it is there. UART just, man, it is just such a great surface. Okay, and now we'll do a Rembrandt. Let's do this pink one, kind of like the order that we did. Oh, gorgeous. It just fills up that tooth. It looks so pretty. Same thing. I'll do another Rembrandt just to keep it kind of consistent. We'll do a Geralt. And we'll do the Cineleer. And we'll do a Terry Ludwig. I'll do the Terry Ludwig over here with a lot of order. Do you see how brilliant that is? It's just beautiful. Okay, and now I will also go in there and do another idea for a Poppy. Get the darker, and we'll see how the layers work here. Okay. Oh yeah, that just layers so beautifully. I just love that. It's gorgeous. It's pretty obvious why people like the Terry Ludwigs. They're just great, great color. Also like this color a little bit too. Again, I got to resist the urge to just paint and have fun. Use orange up here to kind of be consistent so you can get an idea. Okay, now we'll move on to this over here is the prepared surface. Same thing. Now again, this one is not going to have the tooth that the other ones do, and it has a rough surface. And actually, I meant to mention on my mat board, I used the rougher surface. Sometimes I like the way that looks versus the smooth surface that's on the other side. So that's a personal preference. This will come out looking much more artistic and loose than using the smooth surface. But this has that beautiful glow underneath as well. Okay, again, moving on to the Rembrandt. That's another Rembrandt. You see the spaces in between it? Some people like it. Some people don't. Here's the Geralt. Beautiful. Purple's my favorite color. I just can't help it. Okay, now we'll move on to the Centa Lear one. And again, I only did one coat of this. So it's not really got as much tooth to it as the other ones. And then let's see. Now we'll do the Terry Ludwig here. Okay. But still, if we want to do a like a poppy flower, these are all really fast, you'll see that it still does take it really well. And it's really pretty. But it has more of the blended, I mean, the rougher look, the more artistic, impressionistic look. Purple, purple. Oh, it's already got orange. That's one thing I find when I'm working with this. There's a lot of times I like to add orange for punch. And it's hard to do because it's already orange. All right. So now we're getting an idea of the differences. This has that loose artistic look. This has that smooth, buttery, pretty look. This one, it takes more layers, but not as many layers. This again, has a really, it takes the pastels really well, the LeCart paper. And then the newsprint, everything's just, you see, that's already just all falling off of it. So now you've got a little bit of an idea of what you might want to play with. If I had to make a suggestion, again, I've mentioned with the pastels, get a set, maybe a Rembrandt, maybe a Unison, and get a variety colors and values. And if I had to recommend the paper, maybe start with UART or maybe the Canson, just to play around with a little bit. Don't buy massive quantities until you know what you like. But got a little dusty here again, which I love. Some people don't like that about pastels. That doesn't bother me one bit. It's kind of fun. It's almost like you're sculpting and you get dirty doing it. And so that is basically the lesson for today. I really hope this helped you guys to not have to go out and spend a lot of money to experiment on these things by yourself. Feel free to ask a lot of questions. If you have any, I try so hard to answer all of your questions. And I'm just getting so excited. By the way, we just got over a thousand subscribers on this channel here. And that may not sound like a lot to some people because there are some channels that have, oh, 80,000 subscribers. And but that's a big milestone for me. And I want to give all the thanks to you guys. Thank you so much for liking the efforts that I'm giving here. And it's truly, it's for me and it's for you guys. And I'm truly in love loving doing this. So thanks guys. And come back again. Please subscribe if you want to learn more about these pastel tips. Thanks so much.