Pastels have been a lot of fun for me lately. I wondered what impact they’d had in the history of art. I never had a huge interest in history as a high school student. Maybe it was because it was so much about dates, and I’m not a numbers person. But when stories enliven the tales of the past it’s so much more interesting to study. The history of art as a whole seems almost overwhelming, so occasionally now I just look into small portions at a time.
As of late I’ve been working in pastels quite a bit. The piece I’m posting is just a small sketch just to keep some pieces around for such posts. Larger pieces take quite a bit more time.
I’ve always been a big fan of pieces by Mary Cassat and Edgar Degas, but in searching for a link to add to my post I found several other pastel artists who didn’t just use pastels as a means of just laying out works or only for quick sketches. This link on The History of Pastels brought up a few other facts that I found interesting.
One point was about the resiliency of pastel works. I found it intriguing that they noted that pastels are even more resilient than many of the other forms of media. I’d always worried about the handling of pastel works, but hadn’t given much thought to their longevity. Glad to know that the beauty of such works will be around for a long time.