"Can you solve an argument I'm having with a so-called friend. She says that you don't paint with pastels you draw with them. I think what I create with pastels are paintings. So which is it? A drawing or a painting?" -- Eliza
Shouldn't the question be, "Does it really matter?" It's not like drawing or painting are superior or inferior to one another. They're just different ways of creating art, like painting and sculpture are. But, if you insist...
Both the International Association of Pastel Societies and The Pastel Journal magazine use the term painting for artworks created with pastel. As the former is a umbrella organization for pastel societies, presumably its members concur with the use of the term painting.
The best distinction between painting and drawing I've come across is that given by Eric Hebborn in his book The Art Forger's Handbook, where he says:
- "In a drawing the contours of shapes or forms are made with a line, whereas in a painting contours are created by the meeting of two or more areas of different tone or color."
By this definition, Degas painted with his pastels. But when I stand in front of a work by Degas the last thing on my mind is wondering whether it's a painting or a drawing; they're just spectacular artworks.
Figurative painter Paula Rego has said that using pastels is "like painting with your fingers" and that she was "completely seduced by the tactile quality of the material".1
I've also heard it said that people who take pastels seriously, rather than using them as sketching tools, consider themselves to be painting. But before you send me hate mail, remember I said: does it really matter what you call it, isn't it the end result that matters?
References:
1. Recent Pastel Works (http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/rego/theme3.shtm, Paula Rego Exhibition (www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/rego/default.shtm), 25 October 2004 to 2 January 2005, Tate Britain. (Accessed July 2007)
