Soft Pastel Courses and Tutorials

Each month we’ll have a hand picked selection of brand new and exclusive online trainings, workshops, PDF guides and live Q&A’s.

We’ll make sure there’s a range of tuition materials to suit all experience levels – from absolute pastel beginners to professional artists. There’s bound to be something for everyone every month.

Free
52 Lessons

Beginner’s Path

Our recommended path for beginner's, bringing together various Pastel Academy courses covering a range of topics and styles.

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Free
69 Lessons

Intermediate Path

If you've completed the Beginner's path, the Intermediate Path is the next step with a more advanced selection of courses.

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Free
61 Lessons

Advanced Path

If you've got a good grip on the foundational pastelling skills, this path takes you through the more advanced courses at the Pastel Academy.

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Free
12 Lessons

Braiding Light with Tracey Maras

The sky is blue and clouds are fluffy balls of cotton.  This notion follows us from our childhood and unfortunately,…

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Free
2 Lessons

Winter Reflections with Lucy Brangwin

This is a warm wintery scene which uses a little finger blending but involves more pastel on top of pastel…

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Free
2 Lessons

Drawing From Still Life with Caitlin Heslop

In this tutorial Associate Artist, Caitlin Heslop, will talk you through how to draw from a still life set up.

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Free
4 Lessons

Create A Semi Abstract Artwork Using Unison Colour Soft Pastels, with Alison Berrett

Learn to use Unison Colour pastels with water and gain confidence in working quickly and spontaneously from a sketch or colour study of your own or a photo.

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Free
13 Lessons

Let Your Creativity Flow! with Robert Dutton

Robert Dutton shows you how to create shimmering, sparkling and flowing waters with unique expressive and atmospheric effects with Unison Colour pastels and mixed media in exciting combinations.

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Free
12 Lessons

Winter Homestead with Tracey Maras

Painting a Twilight Snow Scene on Textured Ground.

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Free
4 Lessons

Collie with Su Melville

Paint a Collie Dog with Su Melville.

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Free
5 Lessons

Bold And Playful Still Life with Amy Shuckburgh

How to do a still life in a loose, energetic, vivid style.

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Free
7 Lessons

Red Sky At Night Workshop with Sandra Orme

Join Sandra for a dramatic pastel sky workshop exploring a wonderfully vibrant evening sunset. 

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Free
Late evening sky in soft pastel.
16 Lessons

5 Day Pastel Challenge: Explore An Evocative Evening Sky with Sandra Orme

This 5 day pastel challenge, with award winning pastel artist Sandra Orme, will take you through creating beautiful clouds in an evening sky using Unison Colour Pastels ‘Sky’ set on Pastel Mat paper.

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Free
8 Lessons

How To Compose And Paint A Successful Triptych with Lucy Brangwin

This lesson will explain and show the basics in painting a triptych and sizing up your art to a large scale.

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Free
3 Lessons

Jellyfish with Meral Altilar

Paint a beautiful vibrant Jellyfish with Meral.

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Free
Sgraffito Course with Cathy Pearce
19 Lessons

Sgraffito with Cathy Pearce

Cathy shows you a particular way of scratching the surface of Clairefontaine Pastelmat with a wooden golf tee or mini barbecue stick before laying down pastel.

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Free
13 Lessons

Showing Pastels in a Commercial Gallery: Notes from the Inside with Rhonda Abrams

Rhonda shares her experience of having an art show in a commercial gallery.

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Free
2 Lessons

Drawing From Nature with Caitlin Heslop

In this tutorial, Caitlin will guide you through different approaches to ‘Drawing from Nature – including quick preliminary sketches done from a vase of flowers.

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Free
10 Lessons

Space, light and air! with Robert Dutton

Unison Colour Associate Artist Robert Dutton, known to create a dramatic painting or two, shows how the focus of mood and…

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Free
14 Lessons

Painting A Bird Nest In An Old Building with Tracey Maras

The juxtaposition of nature and human-made structures and the variety of textures result in a compelling painting.

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Free
11 Lessons

Expressive Landscape ‘Painting’ with Soft Pastels with Robert Dutton

Robert Dutton explains the benefits of using different solvents with Unison Colour pastels to express your ideas and ‘paint’ with your pastels.

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Free
4 Lessons

River Walks with Nina Squire

Nina inspires you to capture moments from local walks and bring them to your paintings.

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Free
8 Lessons

Mangroves Workshop with Julie Skoda

The workshop day took place in June 2023, but you can still enjoy it as a standalone pastel course.

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Free
Meral's Mossy Branch soft pastel painting.
3 Lessons

A Mossy Branch with Meral Altilar

Hi and welcome to my mossy branch demonstration. I wanted to create a one hour workshop that would give you the opportunity to explore markings when pastelling trees and greenery with a little bit of whimsy thrown in!

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