Pastel Podcast Episode 9: Alain Picard

Alain Picard is known for color-forward, energetic pastel paintings that feel both immediate and thoughtful. His path to becoming a full-time pastel artist took a few turns—baseball dreams gave way to illustration, then oil painting, and finally a wholehearted commitment to pastel. Along the way he developed a painterly approach that blends drawing and painting, prioritizes expressive marks, and teaches artists how to say more with less.

From Left-Handed Pitcher to Pastelist

Picard’s early life centered on baseball. When that dream faded in college, he stumbled into art and found a surprising clarity: drawing had been there all along. A mentor at his state school steered him toward illustration, opening doors to institutions and experiences that shaped his craft. A demanding figure-drawing teacher introduced him to soft pastels, and the immediacy of the medium connected with his temperament as both draftsman and painter.

He experimented widely—watercolor, acrylic, oil—and absorbed lessons from oil painting that later informed his pastel work. Over time he embraced pastel as his primary medium, drawn to how it allowed simultaneous drawing and painting, vivid color, and direct mark making.

Why Pastel? The Draw of Immediacy and Color

Pastel appealed to Picard for two main reasons. First, the medium’s directness satisfies the draftsman in him: it lets him sketch, structure, and describe form without delay. Second, pastel’s luminous color and tactile application deliver painterly results that feel alive. These qualities allowed Picard to move beyond tight realism into a freer, more expressive vocabulary.

Technique Evolution: From Tight Likeness to Painterly Expression

Early in his career Picard focused on highly finished portraits and children’s commissions, working layered and detailed with pastel pencils and softs. Financial and creative pressure during the 2008 housing crisis pushed him to teach demonstrations and workshops—often under severe time constraints. Those live demos forced him to rethink process and led him to an alla prima, massing-first approach that emphasized the big picture before details.

Key shifts in his technique include:

• Massing before refining: Block in values and color first, then refine shapes and edges from general to specific.
• Economy of mark: Favor marks that describe form and energy, not every tiny detail.
• Layering strategically: Use underpaintings or washes to establish temperature and mood, then build marks on top.

Abstraction Within Representation

Picard often speaks about the excitement of “abstraction within representation.” Rather than pursuing pure photorealism, he treats negative shapes, color relationships, and marks as compositional tools. A still life or landscape becomes as much about rhythm, color contrast, and tactile gesture as it is about the subject itself.

This approach makes many of his studio works feel fresh and immediate—pieces that read clearly as a subject while remaining vibrant and suggestive.

The 100-Stroke Challenge: A Practice for Clarity

One of Picard’s most useful teaching exercises is the 100-stroke challenge. Limiting the number of strokes forces decision-making about priority and economy. Students must ask: what matters most? What strokes will communicate the essence?

The exercise has practical benefits:

• Teaches prioritization of value, shape, and gesture.
• Reduces preciousness and overworking.
• Improves the ability to warm up quickly and capture the essence of a subject in 15 to 20 minutes.

Underpainting, Alcohol Washes, and Mixed Approaches

Picard uses a range of underpainting techniques depending on the goal of the piece. Two common strategies are:

• Alcohol washes: Quick washes of complementary or local color to establish temperature and underlying values. This is useful for landscapes and night scenes that need a luminous base.
• Local color underpainting: Blocking in general color masses to create a solid foundation before moving toward detail.

He often replicates the physiological relationship of studio painting to life painting—easel placement, viewing distance, and process—so that working from reference photos feels like painting from a live model. The goal is to preserve the immediacy of direct observation even in studio work.

Plein Air vs Studio: Different Rhythms, Same Principles

Picard balances plein air sessions and studio work depending on the year and obligations. Plein air encourages quick decisions and short time limits—traits he favors—while studio work allows larger, more layered explorations. His studio paintings still aim to retain the freshness and mark-based energy of location work.

Materials and Tools He Recommends

Picard is practical and experimental with materials. Some favorite tools and choices include:

• UART sanded paper: A go-to surface for its tooth and durability. He also uses UART’s peel-and-stick option for mounting convenience.
• Terry Ludwig pastels: Custom portrait and landscape sets curated from Ludwig’s range. These sets contain frequently used skin tones and vibrant accent colors such as turquoise and violets.
• Charcoal on toned paper: For some works he sketches directly in charcoal then applies pastel, preserving line energy beneath color.

Teaching Philosophy and Offerings

Teaching shaped Picard’s own technique: demonstrations, time limits, and the need to explain “why” as well as “how” refined his process. He invites artists into a culture of play and curiosity, where permission to experiment helps overcome internal obstacles and the fear of making mistakes.

Educational offerings include minute-long lessons and multi-session courses that cover landscape, portrait, and mark making. He also runs an ongoing membership community where artists rotate through topics like portrait, figure, still life, and landscape to keep growth steady and practical.

Parting Advice: Show Up and Make Beauty

“When people create truly they share beauty. There’s an encounter with hope that happens in the environment where that beauty is experienced.”

Picard emphasizes that creating is a form of self-care and a way to bring renewal into the world. Regular practice, permission to play, and exercises that introduce constraints will yield breakthroughs. His message is simple and energizing: keep showing up at the easel. The world benefits when artists create.

Quick Practical Takeaways

1. Block in general values and color before refining details.
2. Use limited colors to train essential decision-making (for example, choose three darks, three mid-tones, three lights, and one favorite accent).
3. Try the 100-stroke challenge to build economy and clarity.
4. Experiment with underpaintings via alcohol washes or local color to set mood.
5. Let mark making and negative shapes drive composition as much as literal detail.

For artists seeking to make their pastel work more vibrant and expressive, Picard’s path offers a clear roadmap: study the fundamentals, embrace time-based constraints, learn to mass-in, and then use bold marks and color to keep paintings alive. The result is work that reads with confidence, warmth, and the unmistakable energy of a practiced hand.

Related Links from this episode of the Pastel Podcast:

• Alain’s Website
• Terry Ludwig Pastels
• International Association of Pastel Societies
• Pastel Today free e-newsletter
• Pastel Live Online Conference