There is something weirdly comforting in the fact that it is a stick of pastel that one is holding. No brushes. No water jars. Nothing to set you and keep you uncertain about starting off. You simply choose a color and forget it. There is something as simple as that does to your mood  – click here for more help about this topic!

This is the immediate or rather immediate connection of your hand and your surface which is the pastel painting. No in-between. The pigment is also used to put where you want it and it is an ability that is not too strict but quite relaxing.

You do not play with instruments.You are merely. fooling with color.You’re only. color-drawing.You are playing around with the paint.You are nothing but. sporting with colour.You are only. playing with colour. You’re just… drawing with color.

The texture is not an insignificant one either. The rhythm is the dragging of the pastel on the paper. Less strokes, longer, fewer, less pressure, heavy. In a few minutes, you slip in it unconsciously.

It is repetitive in a good manner.

I have noticed that I never have pastels. You start with a bare drawing, perhaps of a landscape, or of some simple mixture of colours, and then, however, you are sucked into little modifications. Thou art contrasted with them, dull that part.

Nothing feels urgent.

It is likely that it is what makes the pastel painting more therapeutic than most. It does not have things waiting around and drying. No obstruction of the passage. You are in the process to the end.

The constant alertness of such a concentration finds its way of tapping in your head.

Errors are also not very impressive. When it is not correct, you can superimpose something or mix it back. It is lenient and is no longer clumsy. Such a balance helps to make the process of relaxation easier since you will not be so scared to spoil the whole work with some one wrong step.

And be honest, the same dread is brought into the creative work by a great majority of us.

Even the colors chosen are a way out. You do not smear paints on a palette. You take out a stick, and take it to trial. When it does not work, then you transform. Intimacy between action and thought is reduced.

That makes things keep on going.

I have had to undergo some instances where I started distracted or possibly feeling frustrated and at midway through the mixing and overlaying process the pressure just. vanished. Not dramatically. Enough to perceive.

It is not violent but it is commonplace.

It also feels pleasure which cannot be described until one has experienced the same. Your hands get a little dirty, the surface is getting rough, the picture starts touching you, not being distant any longer.

It is more significant than it may appear.

Pastel painting has no need of perfection. Quite the contrary, it is attention-grabbing. You are conscious of what you are looking at with your very face the colour, the pressure, the next mark and all the rest of it goes away a little.

And even then, that is just what you need.