Pastel Journal Gallery | Landscape Paintings by Matthew Draper

With an appreciative nod to 19th-century painters, English artist Matthew Draper, featured in the December 2012 issue of Pastel Journal, captures mutable pastel landscapes with a 21st-century sensibility.

The landscape artist first discovered pastels as a way to add color to his charcoal sketches while studying art in college in Cornwall, England. At the time he was using oils to paint atmospheric nocturnal views of the local docks; however, he soon became fascinated with the landscape beyond the shipyards, particularly painting waves during storms when Atlantic rollers would crash into the cliffs. Continually searching for better ways to capture and express his feelings in his work, Draper abandoned oil paints for pastels, developing his own unconventional method for pastel painting—crushing the sticks into dust and rubbing the pigment into the paper with his hands.

View a selection of his pastel landscapes below, and find more of Draper’s work in the December 2012 issue of Pastel Journal.