Lesson 37 - A Study In Shapes With Pastels

In today’s lesson we explored oil pastels. Children’s exposure to all elements of art includes utilizing different methods and mediums. Pastel colors are a very real part of an artists’ repertoire.

We began by looking at two kinds of pastels - oil based and chalk based. Oil based pastels are very soft and have a bright tone and creamy texture. They are easy to use and there is no need to press hard when drawing, as you do with crayons.

Chalk pastels are very similar to chalk you use on a blackboard. They also have bright color and are relatively smooth when used. Chalk pastels however, leave a powdery residue, unlike oil pastels which have no residue at all.

For our introductory study we chose to use oil pastels. The children were able to explore pastels, trying them out on practice paper first. Then for our second part of the lesson, they were asked to think about their favorite shape. Learning to recognize shapes in everything around you is a very basic skill an artist must possess. It is this knowledge that helps tremendously when drawing scenery or objects.  By thinking about their favorite shape, the children were able to draw and explore pastel work at leisure.

As an example, we looked at some work by artist Wayne Thiebaud. He creates artful paintings of cafeteria style food. He also uses repetition to illustrate and show color, shape and placement on the canvas. We specifically looked at his painting of repeated ice cream cones. The children were encouraged to think of shapes and draw and color in an abstract form.

They were also encouraged to fully cover their paper with pastel colors. Some children outlined their shapes in darker color such as black or dark brown.

The last procedure was to try and blend together the pastel colors by using a q-tip and rubbing very hard until the colors blended together.

Today’s objective was to have the children explore the sensorial side of pastel colors, and use shapes to create and illustrate their ideas on paper.
 

Everyone enjoyed working with pastels. Overall the children’s creations were very beautiful and very colorful.