What is it about pastels that has watercolor and oil painters packing up their brushes and stashing their palettes? For artists Allison Krajcik, Jill Stefani Wagner, and Lon Brauer, pastel has offered not just a fresh set of tools, but a radically different way of seeing and expressing light and color. Whether rediscovering the medium after decades or falling for it on a whim, these artists share how pastel deepened their practice — and why others might consider making the leap.
In this edition (Part 2 of 3), we hear from Jill Stefani Wagner.
IT’S LIKE DRAWING AND PAINTING AT THE SAME TIME
Jill Stefani Wagner became captivated by the luminous pastels of a fellow Michigan artist and embraced the chance to explore the medium under her mentorship. “I loved drawing and I felt pastel painting was a natural continuation of that,” she says. But it also presented a conceptual shift: instead of working light to dark as in watercolor, she had to reverse her process — starting with a tonal underpainting and layering progressively lighter hues.
The changes she had to make extended to her plein air toolkit. “Pastels can be dusty, so I began using nitrile gloves to protect my hands and nails,” she says. Carrying around “a box of rocks,” as she puts it, also prompted her adoption of a more limited palette.
What surprised Wagner most, however, was the level of control and flexibility pastels offered — both on location and in the studio. “I could paint for an hour, stop, then continue at any point without worrying about drying time,” she says. “And I could make corrections late into the process — something that’s difficult to do in watercolor.”
That freedom led to creative breakthroughs. Her color palette brightened, and light itself became her subject. “Lightfast and fade-resistant, pastels include only a small amount of binder — it’s like painting with pure color!,” she says. “I started to look for focal points where I could accentuate my new obsession.”
To get started, she says all you need is a small set of medium-soft pastels and a few types of sanded paper. “Experiment with no expectations,” she says, “just play.”
Paint along with Vera Kavura, Aaron Schuerr, W. Truman Hosner, and Rita Kirkman at Pastel Live, September 17 – 19, 2025, with an optional Essential Techniques Day on September 16.
