Intro to Soft Pastels with Lisa Bougie

No experience required! Join Lisa Bougie for a single-session introduction to soft pastels — a responsive, richly pigmented medium that's often confused with oil pastels but works quite differently. There's a particular magic to soft pastels: pure pigment meets paper with almost no barrier between your hand and the colour, letting you blend, layer, and build light directly with your fingertips. The result is a luminous, velvety quality that's hard to achieve with any other medium.

This hands-on session is designed for complete beginners as well as anyone curious to explore the medium further. Participants will get an overview of soft pastels and how they behave on the page, along with a look at various substrates (papers and surfaces) suited to pastel work and how each one affects texture and blending. From there, the focus turns to technique: building up layers of colour, blending and softening edges, and using light and shadow to create depth. By the end of the session, participants will have practiced these techniques to create their own painterly, glowing landscape.

All materials are supplied — just come ready to experiment in a relaxed, low-pressure setting.

Workshop cancellation policy: Stuff happens. We totally understand that despite your best intentions, you may not be able to attend because life. If you cancel at least 4 days in advance of the workshop, we can give you a full refund. If you cancel within 4 days of the workshop, we will refund 75% of the fee.