SOFT PASTELS: Layering Colour from Degas to Johnson

SOFT PASTELS: Layering Colour from Degas to Johnson

Discover how artists from Edgar Degas to Claudette Johnson build depth, light and emotion through layered pastel colour. Degas developed surfaces through repeated strokes and delicate glazes, while Johnson uses bold, saturated planes. Their contrasting approaches reveal the full expressive range of soft pastel, from atmospheric softness to decisive, structural mark-making. We will also be drawing fro other artist's work.

✏ Live Online Class: Sat, 7th February 2026, 2pm GMT

• + 14 Days Recording Access

• Taught by Natalie Charles and Hosted by Frances Stanfield

• Pay What You Can

Please book via eventbrite on a browser, not the Eventbrite app. Email us if you need help!

In this workshop, you will explore soft pastel methods directly through a series of focused exercises on layering colour, understanding surface and pressure, and building your own personal palette. You’ll test how pastel behaves on different toned papers, experiment with blending versus raw marks, and learn how colour stacks, shifts and transforms through additive layers. The session culminates in a longer drawing from reference, where you’ll apply these techniques to create a vivid, emotionally rich image.

We are very excited to welcome guest tutor Natalie Charles! Natalie is a Drawing Year 2023/4 alumnus from the Royal Drawing School. In 2025, she was selected for RBA Rising Stars, the Delphian Gallery Open Call and the Richard Ford Award, a funded residency at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

By the end of the class, you will have a strong grasp of how to build complex colour relationships in pastel, how to work confidently with tone and gesture, and how to let expressive marks remain alive in the finished drawing.

Suggested Materials

We suggest the materials below but you can join with anything you have. You can always invest / search for new materials after the class and draw along again with the recording access.

• Soft pastels
• An eraser or putty rubber
• A rag or fabric off-cut for blending
• Cotton buds or a soft brush - old/cheap makeup brushes are great
• Paper: A4/A3 pastel paper or a heavier cartridge paper (200gsm).
• You will need at least two sheets in a bright colour (e.g. yellow, orange or pink) and two in a darker colour (e.g. dark green, navy or black) for one of the exercises.

• Optional: fixative or cheap hairspray to protect your drawings after the session!

This class is suitable for all levels! Practicing artists and complete beginnners a-like.

Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class

Tickets:

We suggest an amount of £20. However, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we may continue to offer our sessions on this basis whilst also giving our tutors a sustainable wage.

There is also a ticket option to "Pay It Forward" to support us and our students! We offer classes for free to those who can't afford the minimum amount (If this is you please email us to join for free). This continues to ensure our classes are available to everyone!

Once booked:

You will receive a confirmation email and be able to access information on how to join the event via your eventbrite "Online Event Page" You can access this by signing into eventbrite or creating an account using the email address that you booked with.

In the Class:

You can't be seen or heard in our classes, your audio and video are automatically turned off and there's no way these can be turned on. You can talk to us and others in the class in the chat box!

We love to see your drawings or anything else our classes inspire! You can share them with us by tagging us on instagram (@londondrawinggroup) or emailing us if you don't have socials.

More about the Tutor:

Natalie Charles is an artist examining personal archives and quiet intimacies. Moving between drawing, painting, craftwork and animation, she explores the impact of overlooked moments through family stories, collected objects and her ancestral connections. She builds soft, luminous worlds that invite the viewer to reflect on their memories and emotions through hers. You can learn more about Natalie and view her work here.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BOOK VIA THE EVENTBRITE PHONE APP?!

We have been in touch with Eventbrite, and they have informed us that currently you cannot book tickets to online events in their app. It's very frustrating and we have been assured they are working on a solution. In the meantime, we recommend that you book tickets to our events outside of the iOS app - either via a web browser or a desktop. If you book our classes regularly we recommend deleting the eventbrite App.

IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS OR QUESTIONS PLEASE EMAIL :

hello@londondrawinggroup.com

And that's it!

We're really looking forward to you joining us.

Love,

LDG

Image: Natalie Charles, 2024, Always in search of something, Soft pastel and handmade paint on Khadi paper