Painting with dry pastel in art studios

Abstract

The article deals with the issue how to teach primary and secondary students pastel painting and the possibilities of mastering this technique in art studios. The author, who has 20-year pedagogical experience, emphasizes on the sequence of teaching children to artistic techniques from primary school and it is good point to start from painting with pastel. Methodological recommendations for artistic materials, stages of working, advice how to give pedagogical support children’s art studio of painting compositions of different difficulty levels, have been presented. Some examples of students’ works of the 1^st and 5^th grades with sequence of stages how to paint have been shown.

It has been concluded that dry pastel is an important technique for beginner students, since: in the process of learning, children acquire the basic skills of mixing colours and obtaining original colours and shades, which develops primary pupils’ “colour vision”; students quickly acquire the necessary drawing techniques, which guarantees a beautiful result in the form of bright compositions; the finished work pleases children and creates additional motivation for drawing and further improvement of their skills not only with pastel, but also with other techniques. One of the methods of initial mastery of this technique is “finger print” that develops motor skills and improves accuracy. Teachers of fine art are recommended to pay attention to the technique of painting with pastel and often use it at art lessons and hobby clubs due to its significant opportunities in development of children’s painting skills. The further researches are necessary to study the outstanding artists’ methods of painting with dry pastel, the possibilities of using separate techniques in practice of work with students. Furthermore, the mastering of this technique by secondary pupils, high school students and adults will promote to draw portraits using dry pastel as impressionist artists used it in the XVIII century.