Colbeck Art
Jan Colbeck-Illingworth
What is Soft Pastel?
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Soft pastels are pure pigments that have been mixed to produce the required colour, this is then mixed with a binder, called gum tragacanth and a small amounts of china clay and or kaolin, and formed into sticks.
This is the purist colour as an artist can obtain - not even oil paints can match the brilliant intensity and purity of colours.
The amount of binder used will determine the 'hardness' of the sticks themselves. Thus pastel pencils and conté sticks have considerably more binder than the soft versions made that are normally quite big and chunky in comparison.
Pastels should not be confused with chalks - these are limestone - tinted with dye to produce different colours with only the most minute amount of pigment present.
I personally find that the amount you pay for the soft pastel sticks determines their quality and the amount of pigment present. The cheaper the pastels generally, the harder they are thus more binder has been added, often you can see that the sticks look dull and uninteresting. However if you open a box of, say, Unison or Senellier pastels you are immediately struck by the purity and excitement of living colour
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