Nupastels---archival issues?

[JamieWG]

I've been on the lookout for a full set of Nupastels at a good price.....and then just the other day, I was told my one of the Master Pastelists with the PSA that they are NOT archival! Yikes. I think she only uses them now for underpaintings. Do any of you know anything about this? Why don't pastel companies give more pigment information? When you buy artist quality oil paints or watercolors, they tell you the pigment identification number and lightfastness, and you can do your own research on the specific pigment as well. How come pastel companies don't do this? How can we find out what colors are fugitive and which are lightfast?

Jamie

[edit: I meant to say Nupastels in the subject header, not Neopastels!]

[Laura Shelley]

I just did a small personal test of some of my hard pastels: Nupastels and Cretacolors. I tried out about thirty colors, including some favorites of mine like pale lilacs and pinks. I applied two-inch swatches to white drawing paper, backed with black paper to keep light from coming in at the back, and I taped strips of black paper backed with wax paper (to avoid rubbing) over half of each swatch. This whole contraption I set up in a double-paned southwest-facing window, and I checked it every couple of days for two weeks. The window got Northern California fall afternoon sunshine for about eight hours a day. A light-weight test, I think.

The results, for some colors, were pretty horrifying. The earth colors were fine, as were most of the blues I tried. The reds and purples ALL faded or color shifted, some of them drastically. The worst results were those sweet lilacs and pinks--they became very pale and grayish in just a few days, with a sharp demarcation between the covered and uncovered halves of the swatches.

No, I don't know if anyone makes what I'd call *good* hard pastels. :(

MM

[Dark_Shades]

OMG!!!

.... sure hope you guys are wrong :crying: :crying:


.... just thought MM...... what if you paper isnt lightfast or archival, wouldnt that affect the results?

[Dark_Shades]

Found this..... doesnt make for good reading either


http://forum.portraitartist.com/printthread.php?threadid=2159

[Laura Shelley]

Originally posted by Dark_Shades
OMG!!!

.... sure hope you guys are wrong :crying: :crying:


.... just thought MM...... what if you paper isnt lightfast or archival, wouldnt that affect the results?

Not on that time scale, I think--the paper didn't yellow or change in any case. It was Strathmore 400 acid-free, BTW.

I wonder if it would be worth the time to try to make your own hard pastels? Everyone is going for soft, fluid handmade ones, so the recipes all warn about adding too much binder. But if you WANTED them hard, perhaps you could just use more binder and press them firmly or use something to extrude them. It would probably take a lot of trial and error!

As it is, yes, it looks like Nupastels should be kept for underlayers only unless they are the more hardy (cheap) colors like earth tones or the sturdier blues. Do your own tests to find out what you have, guys--it only took fifteen minutes to set mine up, so I think it's worth it just to know what you're dealing with.

MM

[JamieWG]

MM, thank you for your comments and test results. It is invaluable information. I think I'll go test my Contes, Rembrandts, and Unisons. :crying: Boy oh boy, I really don't want to get into making my own pastels. I wonder why the PSA and other pastel organizations haven't put more pressure on the manufacturers to provide archival information....or have they?

Jamie

[JamieWG]

Dawn, thanks so much for that link. Wow! Virgil Elliot has a lot to say on the matter, with samples that faded noticeably in as few as four days, and yet his Unison samples did not fade at all after 14 months. 'Guess I'll stick with those for now, and will be getting my own tests brewing this week. I'd better do my oil pastels too. Whew!

Jamie

[Rick R]

Don't give up on hard pastels yet. I'd like to see the results of the Faber-Castell hard pastels.

- Rick

[Mikki Petersen]

This is interesting...I tend to hang my paintings out of bright light, but still...

Last Spring, I bought a BIG set of Yarka pastels on E-Bay. They fade so badly that they were already fading in the wooden box! When I began peeling them, I could clearly see where they were darker under the papers. they are now set aside for my grandkids to use when they visit. I've pretty much gotten away fromt he Nupastels too. I'm finding that with art supplies as with computers, one gets what one pays for...even though some of those prices really pinch.

[E-J]

I found this article from May 2003 on the website of Maryland Pastel Society:

http://www.marylandpastelsociety.com/pdf/roundtable.pdf

Quote: "40-50% OF THE PASTELS ON THE MARKET ARE FUGITIVE. Nupastel is notorious. None are lightfast ...

So far, nearly all of UNISON are lightfast because these pastels contain only pigments, no dyes. Only one color fades ...

SENNELIER’s new set of 150 is also lightfast.

YARKA is at the other extreme. It is made as student pastels only."

:eek:

As soon as I start selling, I'll be investing in a nice big set of Unisons.

[CoolArtiste]

If you keep the pastel painting out of direct sunlight, will the nupastels still fade or not?

[Craig Houghton]

Originally posted by Madame Manga

The results, for some colors, were pretty horrifying. The earth colors were fine, as were most of the blues I tried. The reds and purples ALL faded or color shifted, some of them drastically. The worst results were those sweet lilacs and pinks--they became very pale and grayish in just a few days, with a sharp demarcation between the covered and uncovered halves of the swatches.


Thank you for posting this! Could you show us a scan or pic of the test as well?

-Craig

[orchid black]

yes, thank you so very much!

[Katherine J]

Boy, is this ever interesting. And thanks for the links to other articles. It sure makes you think about what you're using.

Katherine

[Deborah Secor]

I think personal tests for lightfastness are the best but I want to add one thought to this discussion.

What is permanent?

I worked for seven years with Albert Handell whose attitude I've adopted, not because I'm just a follower but because I agree with him. He says that 'archival' means his lifetime! (LOL) He figures he has another 20 to 30 years and after that it's the problem of the archivists anyway... How much can you assure? I think it's good to use quality materials, but the fact of the matter is NOTHING is permanent.

We have pastels on paper from the 1500s that look like they were done yesterday, while oils from the same era are cracked, peeling and brown. Watercolors fade in 25 years --or sooner. Pastels are not permanent, but every medium has its problems. Do the best you can and if you become famous enough to be in museums they'll inherit the problems your paintings have after you die--and they love it! It's what they do, after all.

I also want to say that there are a lot of manufacturers who want you to feel threatened by the archival qualities (or lack of such) of pastels, paper, etc, so that you'll buy more expensive materials. Those pastels from the 1500s are on rag paper. So use good rag paper...but who is to say that Wallis won't prove to be the best in 300 years--or Art Spectrum, or any other? And will you be around to care?

Oh, one other thing. You can get usually get lightfastness ratings for pastels from the manufacturers. In the Rembrandts they are marked by a + or ++ or +++ after the number. In Great Americans you can find it on the chart, as with others. Just look for it. You can always request it from a manufacturer or the art supply store, too.

(I'd also take what Virgil Elliott says with a grain of salt. There's a movement afoot that wants to keep us all "safe" from the dangers of pastels, which threatens to ban all pastels from being made. We're all gonna die from'colored' lung disease, I guess. I can't say Elliott's part of it, but I wonder...)

Deborah

[ArtsiePhartsie]

Deborah...what a wonderful reply... " Nothing is permenant". Thankyou for that wonderful "perspective".

~Artsie

[bcraver]

I agree Artsie, and thank you Deborah!

We will just do the best we can with what we have, and the rest is somewhat out of our hands.

(But I'm glad I have Unisons and other "reliable" brands for my top layers. Actually I'm not using Nupastels anywhere near as much as when I got started.)

[Vegas Art Guy]

Wow,
Very interesting thread here. I just want to make sure of one thing. We are talking about hard pastels and not oil pastels right? I have this tendency to get them mixed up, and while I'm asking silly questions are there any problems with conte crayons?

Greg

[ArtsiePhartsie]

Yes Vegas Art Guy...we are talking about hard pastels...at least I think we are!

~Artsie

[hamsterdance]

Just bumping this to bookmark it in my post history. Some interesting stuff was said. I wonder if it's still true? Whatever happened to ASTM testing pastels?

[Kitty Wallis]

Archival pastels. It depends on the pigments used.

Most soft pastels are meant to be archival, I believe. Except for the student grade ones, like Yarka.

I always understood that Newpastels were not archival. That they were made for the 'professionals' Architects, graphic artists, all who were doing presentations or pieces for printing in the media, rather than art meant to last.

For more information about lightfast pigments:
Micheal Wilcox did an Excellent expose on watercolor paints. He also tells a brief history of each color and a summary of the charactaristics of each pigment. His book also has reproductions of his tests and some testy comments like 'It would have been cheaper to have left the paper white' when talking about a badly fading color called Peacock Blue. He scourged the art supply manufacturers for producing colors with euphemistic names that told nothing about the pigments used. Since his book was published there has been a big change in the labeling and production of lightfast watercolors. He has a website. www.schoolofcolor.com/

Pastels are still being made with cute names on the labels rather than information about what's actually in them. Some manufacturers are providing that information in their charts, I hear.

Thanks for bumping this, Hamsterdance.

[Khadres]

I did some research before I bought a set of Polychromos "hard" pastels and found that they do, indeed, give a light fastness index on each color in the literature they include with the sets. I believe the lowest rating (which was still as good as most NuPastels) was on the pale yellows...the weak spot in most color arrays, as far as I can tell.

I mentioned NuPastels' problems to the only "major" art supply store we have here and was told (with a sort of disdainful simper) that they're only meant for poverty-ridden students who can't afford "the good stuff".

Still, when all is said and done, I think we can get a little carried away with the whole archival bit. I've got drawings I did decades ago with NuPastels and since they HAVEN'T been hung in direct sunlight for any length of time, they still look fine. I might also point out that this has not been the case with all colors of Canson Mi Tientes! At least one of their darkish gray/brownish colors does fade...not sure why, but it does. I doubt, though, that anyone with a picture done on this paper has noticed a problem since in a framed painting, the whole surface would've probably faded at the same rate anyway.

I think that, yes, we should do the best we can to use the best, most long-lasting and stable materials available in our artwork, but one can also be totally hamstrung if they allow all this "archival for a thousand years" business to take over common sense.

Another point is that earth colors (siennas, umbers, etc.) are going to be pretty permanent in any medium since they are made with inorganic earth pigments and since these pigments are among the cheapest to use, even NuPastels earth colors should be reliable. I would assume the same can be said for Conte crayons, since most of those are earth pigments too.

[Kitty Wallis]

I did my own test of colored pastel paper, cutting strips of all the tans, browns, peaches, greens, etc. of all the brands, covering half of each one and setting them on the back shelf of my car. They all faded in less than 6 months. There were strathmores, cansons, fabrianos.

[Khadres]

I'm not surprised, Kitty. But if one works on these colored papers and COVERS the underlying paper, I don't see a problem with using them. It's the painter who leaves some of the paper color showing through who might be in for a nasty surprise, right?

Actually, that's the only kind of pastels I ever did prior to last winter. I've got one drawing of a pika (small mountain critter that loves rocky terrain and doesn't pee) with a bit of rocks and grass vignetted on a dark brown Canson. This won an award in a show eons ago, so I decided to keep it. It still looks fine, but then I haven't compared the background to an unused piece of the same color either. Luckily, the colors used and the subject matter shouldn't clash with color fading of the paper on that particular picture, but I can see that it COULD be a problem.

But this picture was ALSO done with NuPastels and I DO think some of the lighter colors, especially, could use some sprucing up...the whole thing looks a tad "dimmer" colorwise than I remember. Too bad I didn't get an accurate color photo of the original at the time I created it...would be interesting to see how it's changed overall. Like I say, if no one knew the difference it still looks okay...but I seem to remember the lighter colors being a bit more vibrant.