Pastel is a stick of dry color that an artist draws with directly on paper. It is made of powdered pigment held together by just enough binder, a gum that keeps the stick from crumbling.
It goes on with no water and no oil, so nothing has to dry on the sheet. What the viewer sees is raw color, which is why pastel looks so bright.
One of the best known pastels is Woman Having Her Hair Combed, made around 1886 to 1888 by the French painter Edgar Degas. It shows how much a stick of powder can do.
Degas laid the color in thick strokes set side by side, so that up close the picture breaks into separate marks. The paper was light green when he used it and has since turned a warm gray.
Such a picture is fragile. Each layer of powder sits loose on the one below, and the slightest rub can smear it.
The usual remedy is fixative, a spray that glues the powder to the paper. But it darkens the colors and dulls the very brilliance that makes the medium worth using.
Degas found his own way around that problem, told further down this page. It kept his colors fresh, but the surface stayed fragile, and the sheet can still be shown only under glass or behind a protective cover.
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A stick named after dough
The name describes how each stick is made…
What You'll Discover
How pastel differs from chalk and oil pastel.
Who turned pastel portraits into travel souvenirs.
What the Royal Academy's first president thought of pastel.
How Degas layered powder without smudging it.
Why pastel fell out of fashion.