Pastels for the Absolute Beginner

Take a crash course in pastel drawing and painting with this beginner-friendly guidebook featuring step-by-step instructions and 8 projects for hard and soft pastels!

Start your journey with pastel painting and drawing, and learn how to produce modern, lively, and colorful artwork with this exciting art medium. In this complete, beginner-friendly course, you’ll find guidance on:

• Choosing and working with different materials
• Setting up your workspace
• Starting to draw—with confidence!
• Pastel techniques (2 step-by-step exercises)
• How to work with color (1 step-by-step exercises)
• Painting landscapes (3 step-by-step exercises)
• Adding life to your paintings (2 step-by-step exercises)
• Mastering composition

The step-by-step exercises and longer projects help you build essential pastel painting and drawing skills, allowing you to produce a range of subjects—from landscapes and animals to still life! Vital drawing skills, color theory, and other useful tips are demonstrated, offering beginner pastel artists a wealth of ideas and inspiration for their future works.ArtBook Review, September 2019
The idea of an Absolute Beginner series is a good one. Anyone taking up painting, or starting with a new medium needs a sound guide that is well-grounded in the basics and assumes no previous knowledge. Previous volumes have taken that very much to heart and included some very basic work that doesn’t tax the creative or technical endeavours too heavily.
The book is certainly thorough. Subjects include landscapes, waterscapes, people and animals, with skies, trees and waves thrown in along the way. Rebecca is primarily a portrait and equestrian artist and this shows – these are easily her strongest subjects. However, she is thoroughly at home with her medium and handles everything well. Her demonstrations and explanations are concise, but easy to follow. They will, I think, be of value to anyone – at whatever level – working with pastel.Based near Exeter in Devon, Rebecca paints, teaches and writes. Her dynamic pastels capture the movement and atmosphere of subjects ranging from equestrian and landscape to figures and architecture.
Graduating in Theatre Design, her early career was in theatre and interior design in London. Portrait commissions include dancers in English National Ballet and West End actors. Her equestrian work focuses on people working with horses, Arabians, and the moorland ponies of Devon.
Rebecca teaches pastel courses in Britain and Italy, writes for art magazines and is writing a pastel book for Search Press.
Exhibitions include the Society of Equestrian Artists, and the Pastel Society. Rebecca's work was exhibited at the Mall Galleries in the 'Artists of the Year 2018 Exhibition'.