It is strangely reassuring that one is holding a stick of pastel. No brushes. No water jars. No arrangement that causes you to be indecisive about getting going. You simply choose a color and leave it. There is something as simple as that does to your mood. Click for source here for recent info!
This is the immediate or rather immediate connection of your hand and your surface which is the pastel painting. No in-between. The pigment is also used to put where you want it and it is an ability that is not too strict but quite relaxing.
You are not playing with instruments.You are simply. playing with color.You’re only. color-drawing.You’re just. drawing with color. You’re just… drawing with color.
The texture is not negligible too. The dragging of the pastel on the paper is a rhythm. Less strokes, longer, fewer sweeps, less pressure, heavier. In a few minutes, you slip in it unconsciously.
It is repetitive in a good manner.
I have observed that there is no time when I have pastels. You start with a bare drawing, perhaps of a landscape, or of some simple mixture of colours, and then, however, you are sucked into little modifications. There they contrast, dull that part.
Nothing feels urgent.
It is likely that it is what makes the pastel painting more therapeutic than most. It does not require things to wait around and dry. No stoppage of the flow. You are in the process to the end.
The continuous attentiveness of that kind of concentration has a way of tapping into your head.
Mistakes are not very impressive either. When it is not correct, you can superimpose something or mix it back. It is tolerant and no longer clumsy. This kind of balance helps to make the relaxation easier as you are not afraid to spoil the whole work with just one wrong step.
And be truthful, the same fear is taken into the creative work by a great majority of us.
Even the colors selected are an escape. You do not smear paints on a palette. You take a stick and put it to trial. When it does not work, then you transform. Intimacy between action and thought is reduced.
That makes things keep on going.
I have been forced to experience a few cases when I began distracted or somewhat frustrated and halfway through the mixing and overlaying process, the pressure has simply. disappeared. Not dramatically. Enough to perceive.
It is not aggressive but commonplace.
It is also feel pleasure that cannot be explained until one experiences it. Your hands get a little dirty, the surface is getting rough, the picture starts touching you, not being distant any longer.
It is more significant than it may appear.
Pastel painting has no need of perfection. On the contrary, it attracts attention. You are conscious of what you are looking at with your very face the colour, the pressure, the next mark and all the rest of it goes away a little.
And even then, that is just what you need.