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Daler-Rowney
Artists' Pastels - In The Making
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 The very word pastel painting evokes images of Degas, the most famous exponent of this exciting medium, which is characterised by vibrant matt colour.

Pastel paintings in their present form date from the 1750s, but if we include the chalk drawings on cave walls, they trace back to prehistoric times.

Pastels have a charm and texture unmatched by other media, an effect created by unbound pigment on the surface of the paper.

Unlike oil colours where pigment is bound in drying oil and glued to the canvas, pastel marks are held by the interweave of paper fibres.

True they can be dislodged by a flick of the finger, but the apparent fragility of pastels shouldn't deter the artist from using them.

Pastel paintings from the 18th century remain as bright and fresh as the day they were painted. Daler-Rowney have been making pastels since the 1830s and they are now the acknowledged masters.

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 Pigment, chalk, china clay and small amounts of binder and preservative are wet blended together. Unlike other colour ranges, the pigment is not ground to a smaller particle size, but simply blended to give the correct tint.

A small sample of wet pastel mix is oven dried and tested against the standard for colour and mark.

Samples of every batch are kept for up to 10 years. The pastel mix must match the standard exactly before it is passed to the extruding department.


The mix is fed into the extruder and forced by a ram through a round or square- Shaped die to form it into strips round for soft pastels, square for square pastels.

These are cut to length using a knife. Square pastels are stamped with the company name, colour and tint numbers. After drying, they are made up into sets, or packs for open stock.

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Soft pastels, too fragile to withstand stamping, are individually wrapped in paper sleeves which are printed with the company name, colour and tint numbers.

The extra binding agent in square pastels, which makes them less fragile than soft pastels of the same tint, also hardens the mark on paper.

Daler-Rowney make 194 soft pastels and 48 square pastels, all produced by skilled technicians, backed by more than 150 years of experience and expertise.


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