Pastel Painting

Pastel painting has a soft, velvety look that comes from pure pigment being pressed right onto the surface. Colors blend gently, but they can also be surprizingly bold when the artist pushes the tones a bit further.

This section gathers painters who use pastels to capture light, texture, and small moments that feel almost touchable. The medium may seem simple at first glance, but its tricky layers and delicate edges show how much skill is really needed to make a piece feel alive.

Harley Brown | Pastel Painting

Harley Brown is a Canadian artist raised in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, who studied at the Alberta College of Fine Art and later at the Camberwell School of Art in England. Known for his paintings of Native American figures, he became a member of the National Academy of Western Art in 1977 and now lives and…
Rachid Talbi | Pastel Painting

Rachid Talbi is a painter born in Kasbat-Tadla, Morocco, in 1967, who trained in microbiology before teaching himself to paint and settling in Oran, Algeria. Working across oil, watercolor, acrylic and pastel, he built bright, richly textured scenes of everyday life inspired by Oran and Morocco, became a permanent artist at the Dar El Kenz…
Olena Duchene | Pastel Painting

Olena Duchene is a French artist with Ukrainian roots, known for delicate floral paintings in watercolor and pastel. She grew up in Ukraine during years of many restrictions, and she has said her art has become a way of expressing the freedom she has found since, painting flowers with a soft, dreamlike touch that has…
Kathy Fincher | Pastel Painting

Kathy Fincher is an American painter who spent her early years as a National Water Ski champion, representing the United States as a show skier in Japan and competing as a downhill snow ski racer for Delta Airlines. After a change of heart during a Bible study on marriage, she stepped back from competitive sports…
Mary Cassatt | Pastel Painting

Mary Cassatt was an American painter born in Pennsylvania in 1844, best known as the only American artist to exhibit alongside the French Impressionists in Paris. She built her reputation on tender, intimate paintings of women and children, often focused on the quiet bond between mother and child, as seen in her well known work…
Pastel Painting | Pastel Painting

This guide traces the story of pastel painting, from its early use in ancient Egypt and Greece to its rise in the 18th century through artists like Chardin and La Tour. It looks at how pastel’s soft, layered technique blends drawing and painting, and profiles the artists who shaped the medium, including Edgar Degas, Mary…
Wojciech Krupa | Pastel Painting

Wojciech Krupa is a cardiac surgeon in Germany who has spent the last fifteen years painting alongside his medical career. He works outdoors with pencil, charcoal, pastel and watercolor, capturing forests, fields and quiet paths in a calm, reflective style. He has held modest exhibitions in Bad Bevensen and at the state library in Cottbus,…
German Aracil | Pastel Painting

Germán Aracil is a Spanish painter born in Alicante in 1965, trained at the San Carlos School of Fine Art in Valencia. He is known for luminous, emotionally intimate portraits built on strong light, rich skin tones and confident color, and his work has been shown across Spain, the Americas, Japan and Europe since his…
Edgar Degas | Pastel Painting

Edgar Degas was a French painter and sculptor born in Paris in 1834, trained in classical drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts before becoming closely associated with the Impressionists, though his style stayed distinct from theirs. He is best known for scenes of dancers, racecourses and cafes, often cropped and angled in ways inspired by…
Ann Hanson | Pastel Painting

Ann Hanson is an American painter known for highly detailed oil and pastel scenes of the modern American West, drawing on her own friends, family and neighbors as subjects. Rather than depicting a single dramatic event, she captures quiet, open-ended moments that let viewers imagine the fuller story behind them. Her work has been praised…
Rosmery Mamani Ventura | Pastel Painting

Rosmery Mamani Ventura is a young Bolivian pastel artist who left her rural Aymara community at 14 to work as a maid in El Alto, an experience that later shaped the compassionate portraits she is known for today. She draws the elderly, children, and people living on the margins of city life, seeing her own…