Pastel

This week, I’ve happened upon the word pastel.

Pastel (noun)

A stick of soft drawing material

Pastel (adjective)

A soft shade of muted colour

What comes to mind?

The word pastel is taking me not to colour, but to texture. The powdery pigment of soft chalky pastels: a scratch here, a finger smudge there, lift the paper to brush off the dust.  The greasy smudge of oil pastels. A grubby thumb print accidently wiped across crisp white paper.

I think of pastel de nata, too. Seemingly unrelated yet joined back in time by their common word: pastel – a dough or paste.

I think how it’s been a long while back in time since I pushed pastels across a piece of paper. I’ll happily make time for dough – food my creativity of convenience.

Where might this week’s word take you?

Over the coming days, keep an eye out for an object or two that catches your eye. Can you create a still life with it?

Arrange a small scene of your chosen objects that you can observe and record. Use any drawing material that you have – pastels, crayons, pencils. If drawing is not for you, try capturing the scene in words. What do you see?

If you need some inspiration for your still life set up, follow this pastel artist as she sets up her compositions through a series of unique experiments with carefully chosen objects, sunlight and serendipitous magic.

As always, we love to see what you come up with, if you’d like to share. And if you’d like to share it in our weekly Note and Journal, please send it to me.