You say painting, we say drawing

You say painting, we say drawing

You say painting, we say drawing

Throughout this article, we refer to the act of making an artwork with pastel as drawing. But pastel can also be used in a manner that is very similar to painting. This painting-or-drawing question can cause tempers to flare, so we want to dig into the debate a little.

Pastel use can resemble painting in many ways. You can apply the material to a support and use it in a rich, dense film of layered color, as with painting. You can wash the pastel with alcohol or other materials to completely cover the support with pastel color, building up the layers of pastel until the appearance can be difficult to discern from painting.

Many artists who work with painting media such as watercolor or oil also use pastel to make studies for traditional paintings. You can even add pastel on top of acrylic or watercolor paintings. You can read more about using pastel with other media in Chapter 14. Plus, many artists refer to their pastel artworks as paintings, and galleries and museums often follow suit the pastel portraits by Rosalba Carriera in the Accademia Museum in Venice are labeled as paintings.

So why do many people (including your authors) call it drawing? For us, it's a matter of habit, custom, and training. We were educated to refer to dry materials on paper as drawings. Pastel is similar to other drawing materials; it doesn't require drying, and you apply it as dry material in the form of a stick or pencil not a liquid from a brush or palette knife. You don't mix the colors on a palette, and the material goes on to its support in a manner that is indistinguishable from charcoal or other soft drawing materials. Even museums often categorize pastel artworks as drawings, like the Holbein pastel portrait in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy.

Some people find a happy medium on this issue by making the distinction based on the way the artist uses the pastel. For them, pastel applied as a thick layer of color without any paper visible constitutes a painting. Pastel used to make a thin scrim of lines and color (similar to colored pencil or charcoal) with bits of the paper peeking through is a drawing.

Ultimately, the painting-versus-drawing question is in the eye of the beholder. Whether the artwork is successful or not has nothing to do with whether you call it a drawing or a painting. When we look at a beautiful Degas work in pastel, we aren't trying to decide whether it's a painting or a drawing we're admiring a beautiful piece of art.

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