Artistic Pursuits - Our First Official Lesson in Using Pastels

Have you ever felt intimidated by beautiful works of art and wondered how in the world the artist did it?  I have.  I had watched a few artists create beautiful pictures with colorful sticks, not knowing what they were called, but they sure were pretty colors, especially when the black light showed a beautiful picture hidden within the picture.  Only recently, did I realize that these colorful sticks were pastels.  And the only reason I realized this, was because this wonderful website had a link to this wonderful website, that offers free online pastel tutorials and I have been trying a couple of the tutorials with my own children.  After learning a couple of simple techniques, I realized that this was indeed what these talented artists did.  Words cannot express how excited I am to be learning this art form!  I will probably need to find more online tutorials or actually buy a book (if I can't find one from the library) for us to continue learning techniques, once we finish the lessons offered on the website.  To be honest, I'm hoping that "Nana" has more lessons to share with her grandchildren and us.

Today we did the Path to the Beach lesson.  I put little one in the highchair with paper and crayon, only for her to drop them to the floor and longingly watch us use our new and now very used pastels.  She wants so badly to join in.  I can see now, that we need to expand our supplies, because we are enjoying this venture.  Even my 13-old-son, who has never been interested in coloring and finds it to be a chore, was easily convinced to give it a try.  He's not entirely on board yet, but was drawn back to the table to watch his older sister give the lesson a try.

10-year-old.



13-year-old, who doesn't like to color.

8-year-old.

6-year-old.

16-year-old.

And then mine.  I don't consider myself to have much artistic ability at all, so if I can do it, anyone can give it a try.

I'm going to need to use the better camera for future posts.  Here is the link to the tutorial we used for this lesson.

If you've never tried pastels before, give yourself a chance to try them sometime soon!