Painting with Pastels: Combining Pattern, Color, and Form
Painting with pastels, Robin Sheard Nyikos melds layered surfaces, rich color, pattern, and texture. Plus, her five tips for artists.
By John A. Parks
Robin Sheard Nyikos paints pastel portraits and still lifes that brilliantly combine richly layered surfaces with great clarity of form. Juxtaposing the patterns of exotic fabrics with delicately nuanced descriptions of flesh, her paintings present a world that’s delightfully varied, pleasingly sensual and always engaging.
Additionally, Nyikos often builds her portraits around narrative themes, bringing another dimension of delight and intrigue to the viewer. A woman balances a pot of lilies on her head, or a young girl is dressed up in splendid regalia. These are open-ended stories that pair charm with an enticing hint of mystery.
Discovering Pastels
Nyikos discovered the joys of painting with pastels early in her artistic life. “My inspiration to use it was really the need for a transportable, lightweight sketching medium,” she says. “I used them for painting small landscapes en plein air as an art student in Europe. They needed no drying time and, of course, were wonderfully light and portable.” Later on, while working in Florence, Italy, the artist bought a larger set and began using them for figure studies and portraits. “That’s when I learned that they’re an excellent medium for more sustained work,” she says.
An accomplished painter in oil as well, Nyikos finds that pastels contribute something unique to her work. “They allow me an immediacy of execution and exact colors that I don’t have in oil,” she says. “It’s easy to play with color and composition, to use a variety of surfaces and to create texture. Or to create a high degree of finish. They allow me to get a fresh perspective on my work when I feel that my oils are getting too labored.”
Melding Cultures and Eras
The process of making a painting with pastels begins with inspiration from her subject matter. In Chinese Jacket, American Gadget, Canadian Girl, above, a young girl wears an exotic Chinese jacket over a pair of jeans as she holds her cell phone at the ready. The image incorporates a melding of cultures — ancient and modern, East and West — as it contrasts the technological sleekness of the phone and mass-produced jeans with the beautifully hand-crafted fabric.
Trumping everything in this painting is the delicate vibrancy of the girl with her bright eyes and luxuriant hair. “The jacket in the painting was the starting point for me,” Nyikos explains. “It’s one of several textiles that were left to me by my great-grandparents. I’ve included these fabrics in many of my still life paintings, so it was a natural progression to put one on a model and paint it.”
In this case, the model was her daughter, who is the subject of many of her paintings. In general, Nyikos prefers to work from life, although she also uses photography to augment the process. When she does rely on photos, she consults multiple images, giving herself as full an account of her subject as possible. In Chinese Jacket, it helped to have a model who was readily available.
Building the Work Slowly
Nyikos enjoys working life-size. For Chinese Jacket, she chose a large piece of dark brown Canson paper. “My painting process is more or less the same no matter what the subject is,” she says. “First, I measure the model’s head and make a rough indication on the paper where it would be. I then just go ahead and draw.”
Working on the smooth side of the paper, Nyikos starts the drawing freehand using Nupastels. “It’s important at this point to check the proportions by stepping back frequently to look at the whole thing,” she says. “It takes time, and there’s no such thing as detail or finish. My only concern at this point is to get the composition and drawing right gradually.”
When she’s satisfied with the drawing, Nyikos begins to indicate color. “There’s still no detail at this stage, just shapes,” she says. “I work with Nupastels for as long as I can and then gradually go through my various sets, working from hard to soft — similar to the ‘lean-to-fat’ rule used in oil painting.
Painting With Pastels From Hard to Soft
Following this method, Nyikos gradually changes brands of pastel. The pastels she uses, in order, are Nupastels, Rembrandts, Unisons, Daler-Rowneys and Schminckes. “By the time I get to the Schmincke pastels, the painting is almost finished, and I’m just putting on touches of color.” Working from hard to soft allows the artist to build up her surface slowly without having to use much fixative.
“It also lets me work to a buttery finish that I like,” she says. As she works, she incorporates details gradually, taking care not to let them become too prominent and overwhelm the clarity of form and light in the painting.
Eventually Nyikos builds her paintings to a fairly exacting finish displaying a wealth of detail and fully rendered form. “Detail is never the ultimate goal for me. I just enjoy taking them to that level of finish,” she says. “In my smaller works, usually done on smoother paper over a wash of some sort, I often leave the surface far more ‘open’ with visible strokes of contrasting color. When I feel as though I’m getting too caught up in ‘finish,’ it’s usually time to go and do some sketching.”
Adding Intrigue and Narrative
Many of Nyikos’ portraits feature a strong narrative element, and sometimes Nyikos is able to bring a sense of narrative into works that are wholly still lifes. In Cranes Falling on Silk (at top of page), for instance, she places a Chinese fabric in such a way that the birds in the fabric appear to be flying downward. At the bottom of the composition, a Chinese bowl contains a single iris blossom. The arrangement creates a simple drama as the movement of the cranes is countered by the upward opening of the flower.
“This is another of the textiles that came to me from my great-grandparents,” says Nyikos. “I love the colors, textures and craftsmanship in them. Some of the jackets were hanging on my walls like paintings until I realized that the daylight wasn’t doing them any good. I’ve put them away but still take them out to use as the subjects of still life or figure paintings. Cranes Falling on Silk features one of those jackets. The fabric is really the subject of the painting. I added the Chinese bowl with the iris to create a context in which to display the fabric.”
The Richness of Pattern and Texture
Other still lifes by Nyikos seem to be almost entirely sensual ventures in which the dazzling richness of hues that’s possible only in pastel is used to maximum effect. In Arranging Iris, the artist pitches the deep blue violets of the iris petals against a cloth of warmly saturated yellow while a bright orange vase relates closely to two panels of luxurious red in the background.
Similarly, in Moroccan Colours, above, the brilliant red of the flowers is set against a complementary background of green while a more nuanced red is taken up in the Moroccan rug draped over the table. In both paintings, the flowers, bowls and fabrics become an occasion for endless explorations of color and light.
From Surface to Story
Asked which pastel artists have influenced her, Nyikos comes up with a long list that includes 19th-century heroes Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas, as well as contemporary masters such as the Chilean artist Claudio Bravo, American artist Daniel E. Greene, and Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett. “I could go on and on,” she says.
As for how people respond to her work, Nyikos is thoughtful. “I hope that viewers first enjoy the obvious surface of my pastels as well as the use of color, light and texture, and the draftsmanship,” she says. “I’d like to think that they would then go on to the story I’m telling or to question the items I’ve grouped together. My approach to a subject can sometimes be a bit quirky and, when that’s the case, I would hope to induce a smile or even a laugh.” That delicious mix of complexity, mystery and quirkiness in her work offers an irresistible invitation to viewers for lasting engagement on multiple levels.
The Artist’s Toolkit
- SURFACE: Nyikos prefers Canson paper in various colors: dark green, dark maroon, dark brown and occasionally a middle gray. “I have sanded paper but I rarely use it. I prefer to make my own sanded surface by priming and toning illustration board with acrylic paint and marble dust or Golden’s Acrylic Ground for Pastels.”
- PASTELS: Nupastels, Rembrandts, Unisons, Daler-Rowneys and Schminckes. “I also have a wonderful set of ‘middling hard’ Hungarian pastels that I bought some years ago and use from time to time since they have beautiful grays,” she says. “I also use some Dianne Townsend Thin Line pastels.”
Five Things I’ve Learned About Painting With Pastels
Nyikos recommends these practices, learned from experience, for beginning artists.
- It’s fun to paint in a group. Take a class. Share a model. You can learn a lot from fellow students as well as an instructor.
- Be ready and willing to produce a “glorious failure.” The experience can be cathartic. No shame.
- Paint something from life once in a while.
- Paint on different surfaces in different sizes with different kinds of pastels. Leave your comfort zone from time to time. After all, you can always go back.
- Save soft pastels and details for the end, like a dessert.
ROBIN SHEARD NYIKOS studied at Ontario College of Art and Design, including a year at the school’s facility in Florence, Italy. She then painted in France, Mallorca, England, and the Canary Islands before returning to Canada. Nyikos is a Master Pastelist and a signature member of Pastel Artists Canada. She lives in Ontario with her husband, the portrait painter Istvan Nyikos, and their two children. Learn more at robinsheardnyikos.com.
JOHN A. PARKS is a professional artist and faculty member of the School of Visual Arts in New York. Learn more at johnaparks.com.
A version of this article was originally published in Pastel Journal.
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