Home › Forums › Explore Media › Mixed Media, Encaustics, Collage and Alternative Materials › Acrylics and soft pastels
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August 13, 2009 at 5:20 am #988080
Hi everyone.
I’ve been experimenting a bit with acrylics, combining them with soft pastels.
What I did was paint the whole canvas with acrylics, the first layer.. then I did all the showdows, highlights and details with soft pastels. They seemed to blend in quite nicely. I then sprayed fixativ on the canvas (that made the soft pastel darker..) and then varnish.
Overall it was good. I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar or if you are aware of any other way to mix acrylics with other medium.Thank you
Melina
"In art, there are tears that do lie too deep for thought." -Louis Kronenberger
August 13, 2009 at 8:54 am #1122662Acrylics are great for mixing with lots of different stuff! There are folks here who mix them with oils too…as long as you put the acrylics down first
Try inks, markers, water colors or gouache, and chalk pastels too.
September 13, 2009 at 3:58 pm #1122671Hi MelG,
Combining acrylics and pastels, (along with other media sometimes) just happens to be my favorite way to paint! As Cyndi L said, to get it right, it’s all about which can be worked over what and still “become one” ; )
One word to the wise though… You’ve got to make sure, REALLY make sure that the gallery/framer understands that your painting is a pastel over acrylic. I made the mistake of assuming the gallery’s framer knew this about one of my paintings, but he thought it was an oil and treated it as such. Even though I had what I thought was a good finish varnish on it, pastels are still much more fragile than oils or acrylics, and the painting was pretty damaged from being packed in with “other oils” during the framing and transport process.
So to avoid above disaster, just make sure you say “mixed media”, and clearly communicate you’ve got pastels involved to ensure that your piece stays in one piece!
Happy experimenting!September 14, 2009 at 1:55 am #1122660Thank you all for your replies
This is what I actually made, acrylics first then pastels for the shades and details.
A 50x70cm painting for my niece who loves horseriding. It was done very very quickly as I had to send it to the US (i live in Greece). That was a traumatic experience since I had to carefully pin off the canvas from its frame, roll it and put it in a cylinder along with the nails and rest of the frame, so it could be shipped…
It arrived ok as I heard.
Overall, acrylics and pastels do work very very nicely with each other!! I am going to experiment more and I would love to see other peoples work too!
ThanksMelina
"In art, there are tears that do lie too deep for thought." -Louis Kronenberger
September 14, 2009 at 8:44 am #1122663Oh, your niece is going to LOVE this! Is she Rosie or is that her horse’s name? What little girl with a love of horses wouldn’t love to have her aunt make this for her? So glad to hear it shipped well
September 14, 2009 at 10:57 am #1122661Cyndi, Rosie is my niece’s name and yes she DID love tha painting Thank you for the nice words!
Melina
"In art, there are tears that do lie too deep for thought." -Louis Kronenberger
October 10, 2009 at 5:03 pm #1122670a peer of mine whose art i love actually does acrylic washes and then uses colored pencil on top of it.
here’s her work: http://studentpages.scad.edu/~tnguye25/Formerly known as "Ieloo"
April 5, 2013 at 7:14 pm #1122673I love to experiment with different techniques and am thinking of ways to combine the two. I would never have thought about using pastels for shading acrylics. I imagine it would add a different look and if you don’t like the way it turns out it would be eady to wipe off and start over. I first thought about combining the two after I saw an artist working with pastels at a local coffee shop. I talked with her quite a bit, she works with a wide variety of materials and said that each type of material teaches you dufferent techniques you can use with the others. I purchased a very cheap set of pastels just to get a feel for them before I go more expensive.
December 10, 2014 at 11:24 am #1122666I tried this with a painting of mine and when I went to spray the varnish it just kind of washed off the pastels and I went over the areas with paint.
Very disapointing. but I paint abstracts and I dig in hard with my pastels, so they get quite chalky and thick, maybe that was the problem.
I used pre-stretched canvas and hard wood boards, this was on a board – maybe another problem since it didn’t really get into the surface but sat on top.
maybe I need oil pastels.
I wish there would be an acrylic paint stick, now that would be awesome!
Ciao!
Brian Sommers
My BlogDecember 10, 2014 at 1:26 pm #1122665I tried the same thing on one of mine Brian and my colors washed out as well. Oh well, you live you learn. :-/
December 10, 2014 at 3:57 pm #1122667I just use paint right now..
it makes me want to switch over to oils just so I can use the R&F Pigment sticks! OH I love those..
I think I’ll start slowly collecting those bit by bit.
I think that is why I love pastels. I like the ‘writing’ aspect of it. it makes it very easy to scribble and make the marks I like with a writing instrument then paint and paint brush, etc.
Ciao!
Brian Sommers
My BlogDecember 10, 2014 at 5:23 pm #1122669Hi guys: I am a visitor from acrylics and oils forums.:)
This procedure can be best carried out if after you do your acrylic painting you coat the painting with either Liquitex “clear gesso”, or Golden fine pumice gel and water. It sets up a nice tooth for the Surface.
Here is one I did last year:Cheers, Derek
Website: www.artderek.com
DEMONSTRATIONS:https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1363787
https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1343600
https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1431363December 10, 2014 at 6:35 pm #1122668Yow! That’s a painting?
It looks like a photograph, fantastic.:thumbsup:
Ciao!
Brian Sommers
My BlogDecember 11, 2014 at 8:45 am #1122664What great information, Derek! Thank you for weighing in on the toothy coating.
December 12, 2014 at 12:57 am #1122672Nice painting Dcam!
Your pony looks great Mel!
Some years ago I did a little experimenting with soft pastels and acrylics. This image is not a great example on a monitor but in real life looks quite different. What I did was put down the soft pastel pattern first. Then used a painting knife to spread acrylic gel medium over the soft pastel. So the exact opposite of Mel’s process. The acrylic medium enhanced the soft pastel color brightness and intensity. The gel medium dried clear and left texture ridges in the surface, which you can’t see in the photo image. Anyway, it seemed like an interesting effect to me and might be fun for others to try. I didn’t spread the gel medium around a lot, but just put it straight on. I think if you tried to work it around very much it would mix with the soft pastels and create colored acrylic gel. Which would be interesting also. Perhaps if a person dabbed the gel on with a brush or knife they could get a somewhat painterly surface with the gel medium. A safer way to go would be to apply a fixative isolation layer first first and then add gel medium on top of that.
The clear gel medium does intensify the colors and that is a nice thing as soft pastels can be very soft looking. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There is a classroom thread by Wendy (Sundiver) in the oil pastels forum on doing landscapes with an underpainting and then adding oil pastels on top of it. That might be interesting to look at for people doing soft pastels also.
https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=478800
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