Pastel Painting Step-By-Step Paperback – November 1, 2012

Paul Hardy's demos in this volume are fantastic. The editor could have been more careful about color consistency, and I have noticed at least one photo was printed backward, but overall, this is a wonderful collection of demos/tutorials for those looking for step-by-step instruction.

There are several exercises in the book, using different styles and techniques. The pictures are absolutely stunning! And the best part, you don't have to own every pastel color in the world. There are many demos using limited palettes of common colors! Definitely a keeper!

In general the subjects are presented clearly. The sections on Light, Flowers and Landscapes are well done. The images are good and the captions clear. It is in the early chapters that some further effort would be useful. Some further illustrations and examples would be useful to the entry level artist who may not be familiar with the terminology. I found the book useful and reccomend it to others.

After much looking at books and reading reviews I bought this one for my son who is an artist. He wants to move into pastels and wanted a book about landscapes. This was just what was needed. He is very happy with it.

But my pastels don't have names so all the technical names are useless. I just try to get close to the colors I think and rely on the techniques in the book.

This is a great art tool for beginning and experienced artists alike. Lots of clear, innovative ideas for pastel painting and the author shows her talent and experience in teaching and painting in the plein-air arena.

Another well written and descriptive book on pastel painting. Great book to add to your library of pastel reading.

This is a great resource for anyone looking to get started with pastel painting.

O livro é simplesmente maravilhoso! A impressão gráfica é de excelente qualidade.

Schöne Motive, gut geschrieben, alles, was man für die ersten Schritte mit Pastellstiften wissen muss

Very easy to follow the step by step lessons are good and the book gives a good overall insight into pastel painting

Deux des artistes présents dans le livre ne sont pas du tout ma tasse de thé! C 'est dommage. De plus les explications n'apprennent rien de nouveau et ne font pas avancer l'artiste. Je ne recommande pas

I am glad I bought this book. The tutorial images provide direction for working step by step through adding areas of color and then refining those areas in subsequent steps. It doesn't matter if the the subject is one you're interested in painting because it gets the pastels into your hands and lets you explore laying down the color. It will tell you what processes you do like like, or those you don't. It illustrates how the colors work together and what kind of marks to make to create the image. It's likely your finished painting won't be as pretty, but you'll learn about pastels and that's the whole point. Nice sized examples of paintings of similar subject matter provide an opportunity to see them from a more knowledgeable base - letting you notice technique and approaches that you might have missed before. Basic information on materials starts the book off. There's a bit on mark making and blending, and some basic drawing pointers - viewpoints and perspective, values and light sources, The tutorials make up much of the book and each one covers either a type of landscape (seaside, autumn, hills, townscape, nighttime,) or subject such as trees and flowers. The human figure, or faces, have not been addressed in the book, but there a lot of good techniques that could be put to could use by an artist wanting to place figures into an environment.I hope this helps...