Blending Soft Pastel Paints: How to Get the Right Color

To get the right color for your oil or acrylic painting, you will often have to blend soft pastels together. Depending on your medium and choice of paint, this can cause problems with muddying the color. Using layers to blend your soft pastel paints can be a good way to get around this common problem. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when blending soft pastel paints.

Blending soft pastel paints: Tools to use

There are several types of tools you can use to blend your soft pastels, from elaborate brushes to simply mixing them with your finger. The type of blending instrument you choose will have a major effect on the final product. Using your finger is messy, but it will give you the most flexibility in blending options because you can directly control the speed and pressure of the blend. A household cotton swab works well as a blending tool for soft pastels when you want a broader, sweeping approach. Using a cotton swab does not completely blend the pastels into each other, leaving the colors brighter than with other blending methods. An artists' paintbrush can be another useful tool for blending pastels, especially when you are going for a softer look. The brush also gives you more precision in cleaning up the pigment after blending the colors, leaving only a smooth, thin layer of paint.

Blending soft pastel paints: The layering technique

The appearance of blending soft pastels can also be achieved through layering. Instead of mixing the colors together, you will be painting one on top of each other after the prior layer is dry. The most common method of layered blending is called crosshatching. As the name implies, you simply paint a crosshatch of vertical and horizontal lines on top of the first layer of color. You can also use the pointillism method of layering soft pastels, where dots of the second color are used in certain areas instead of covering the entire first color.

Blending soft pastel paints: Muddiness and too many colors

Blending too many soft pastels together can cause muddiness and will not give you the right color. The best way to get around this problem is to limit the number of colors that are blended at once. You can then layer another blended set of pastels on top of the first after it has had time to dry. A good rule of thumb is to only blend three colors at a time. Some paints work better than others for blending and layering soft pastels. For example, oil paint and pastels will dry fast, making it easy to add another layer on top. Applying a fixative before the next layer will help when working with other types of paint that do not dry as fast.