Including pastels by famous artists such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec as well as works by contemporary painters, this volume explores the full range of possible effects and styles in pastel painting. The author covers all techniques of this medium, from the impressionistic to the surreal. The author explains essential techniques for pastel application and manipulation - impasto, which in pastel means adding a large quantity of colour and making it penetrate deeply into the paper's texture; painting with the fingers, the most direct method for blending and refining detail; and applying pastel linear - fashion without blending to get impressionistic brushstroke effects. He also shows how to choose and interpret a broad range of subjects - nudes, portraits, still lifes, landscapes and seascapes.