Pastel Drawing tutors near me

Learn a new art medium

To create art, the artist needs to use different mediums, such as oil paint, charcoal, watercolour and so on. The more mediums they can use, the more diverse their works of art will be. They can choose between soft and bright colours and apply different techniques, depending on the subject of their drawing.

One of the most powerful art mediums that have been used by artists for centuries is pastel. It has a particular soft colour, so pastels are often very expressive and pleasant to see.

Yet, pastel also turns out to be one of the most difficult techniques to learn for an artist. Since it is a dry medium, a pastel colour cannot be mixed with another pastel colour on the palette but only directly on the canvas or paper.

As a result, you may need quite a good amount of practice before you can draw your first pastels properly and take full advantage of the characteristic soft colour of the medium.

Art students often learn pastel drawing alongside oil painting to master both of these complex techniques at the same time and execute oils and pastels with the same vigour.

Pastel and oil techniques

Pastel and oil are very popular art mediums to create pictures in colour. If you decide to take art lessons and start painting professionally, it is recommendable that you learn them both.

Soft pastels are different from oil paint, so you will expand your artistic horizon and will be able to make the best of each of them by comparing their strong and weak points.

When it comes to techniques used in oil painting and soft pastel drawing, they are not altogether different. For instance, both with pastel and oil, artists use masking, blending, highlighting and other techniques.

At the same time, pastels also have some techniques in common with sketching mediums, such as charcoal, due to their texture. This means that learning to work with pastels will also help you learn are drawing and painting techniques and the other way around.

Choose inspiring subjects to draw

Whether it's pastels, oil painting or another art medium, the main idea is that the process of drawing should be enjoyable for you. One of the necessary conditions for that is that you should carefully choose the subjects you will draw in your free time and in class.

For example, if you like landscape painting, you can try to execute some pastels showing soft-colour natural places or objects. Try to explore the possibilities of pastels and make each work of art in some way different from others.

If you want to learn new pastel techniques for drawing a soft-colour portrait, a still life or a green landscape, you can enrol in a pastel course in art school, watch video lessons on pastels or take lessons with a private art tutor in your free time who will provide you with guidance lesson after lesson.

The advantage of learning about painting and pastels in particular with a tutor is that they can offer you helpful tips, such as choosing the right type of paper, combining different pastel drawing techniques to enhance your landscape, still life or portrait in class, and so on.

Since a tutor can tailor their course to your particular artistic interests and needs, it is likely to be more stimulating and relevant than video lessons, so you will improve your pastel drawing skills faster.

Take pastel drawing lessons on Superprof

Soft pastels are a great art medium to draw a portrait, a landscape or any other subject, but what to do if you've got plenty of artistic ideas but YouTube video lessons and books are not enough to acquire the necessary techniques? A great tool that can help you become a better artist is Superprof.

On Superprof, there are numerous art tutors who can give you a lesson or a course of lessons on pastel drawing, tell you about the best type of paper to use and advise you on the best ways to practise in your free time.

You will better understand how to mix pastel colours on paper, create shades and other effects, and work on expressiveness.

Before booking a lesson, you can read about each tutor's painting course, find out about their teaching experience and read reviews from other users whom they have already helped through in-person or video lessons.

What's especially good about Superprof is that most of our painting and drawing tutors offer their first lesson for free, so you can try out their approach and see if their course can be really useful to you.

After a few lessons with qualified Superprof tutors, you will be able to paint more expressively and enjoy working with shades and colours as you paint a landscape, a portrait or a still life.