Home › Forums › Explore Media › Pastels › Soft Pastel Studio and Gallery › First pastel and a fixative issue
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February 11, 2018 at 2:10 pm #451172
I did this for the WDE, and it is my first pastel. Great fun, but I managed to make a really dusty mess all over myself and everything around me!
Then I sprayed it. Here are “Before Fixative” and “After Fixative” photos. The fixative made it appear dark and muddy! It says it is for pastel, but it was a disaster. I’m not sure why, but the photo doesn’t show just how muddy it appears in real life. Most of the white is gone. For some reason, it looks better in the “After” photo than it does in real life.
So I’ve included everything I used in the photo to see if anyone has advice. I will say that I HAD to fix this, because it was getting dust and mess EVERYWHERE.
C&C welcome and appreciated
February 11, 2018 at 2:29 pm #564004Unfortunately, fixative does dull the colours. You can use it for intermediate stages but better not at the end. Try to use a support with more tooth like Art Spectrum Colourfix, UART Sanded Paper or Sennelier LaCarte. You do not need any fixative with those. Of course, you need to frame your painting under glass! Even fixative doesn’t stop pastel from smudging.
February 11, 2018 at 4:20 pm #564002Dorothea said it very well. I think most of us started out thinking that we have to spray that stuff on our work and we ended up dulling our colors or creating drips, blobs and runs. Hopefully you can re-establish the areas that were affected on your painting, which is very nice by the way! Please don’t let this discourage you – so many of us have been there. :rolleyes:
February 11, 2018 at 4:45 pm #564005Yes fixative does that. The only fixative I found that does not alter the colors too much was soft pastel fixative Latour by Sennelier. Even then you have to be careful, not to spray too much at once, better do several runs. The good thing is you can re-establish areas where the fixative did harm your painting.
I work now mostly on PastelMat and there it is possible to store paintings without being sprayed laying with glassine paper between them and they do not smudge or get destroyed.Btw your painting is really nice and has a story to tell.
Esther
February 11, 2018 at 7:52 pm #564003Painting is very nice. Agree with everyone else about avoiding fixative on the final painting. When I started with pastels, I used canson paper and would spray the back of the paper. Never knew if it even made a difference but it was recommended in a book on pastels. Now only use sanded papers.
There are a few professional artist I have watched on YouTube that do use a final fixative. I have had times when my paper would not accept any more pastel so I spray the entire thing and then work on the final layer. In these cases I know I’m willing to paint almost an entire new top layer.
I had the opportunity to take a 3 hr class with a well know pastel artist. She was exhibiting at a gallery near where I lived. She had large areas of black (black slacks for example) in her large pastels. They were so dark and intense and of course we wanted to know how she got that intense color and the answer was “fixative” and lots of it. She would isolate the black areas while protecting the rest of the painting, use fixative, then more pastel, then more fixative, repeating until satisfied.
Have fun painting. Pam:wave:
February 12, 2018 at 6:02 pm #563998Thanks Dorothea, Donna, Esther and Pam. I appreciate all your insight and valuable tips.
With the paper and pastels I used, it felt like fixative was a must. Dust just kept dropping everywhere, and I don’t have enough space to keep art flat or behind glass. So I guess I’ll need to invest in better quality materials if I want to do anything worth keeping.
Thanks for the info about the Latour spray, Esther. I think I might try it sometime when I get better supplies. I was just reading somewhere that the pastels I have are not lightfast at all, and will fade in a few months. They were very inexpensive pastels, student quality, so I shouldn’t be surprised. But I guess I was hoping they would last a bit longer than a few months!
C&C welcome and appreciated
February 12, 2018 at 7:26 pm #564000Thanks Dorothea, Donna, Esther and Pam. I appreciate all your insight and valuable tips.
With the paper and pastels I used, it felt like fixative was a must. Dust just kept dropping everywhere, and I don’t have enough space to keep art flat or behind glass. So I guess I’ll need to invest in better quality materials if I want to do anything worth keeping.
Thanks for the info about the Latour spray, Esther. I think I might try it sometime when I get better supplies. I was just reading somewhere that the pastels I have are not lightfast at all, and will fade in a few months. They were very inexpensive pastels, student quality, so I shouldn’t be surprised. But I guess I was hoping they would last a bit longer than a few months!
If dust is just dropping everywhere, here are a couple suggestions: For your first application of color, use very little pastel. I make a few strokes and then spread out the pastel either with my fingers or a paper towel. (If you are using a sanded paper, this won’t work!). If you have excess pastel floating on your paper at this point, take your painting over to a garbage can and gently tap the pastel dust off. (You may need to do this after many stages). In order to create a dustless first layer, many artists use a wet underpainting, but as a newcomer, this may be a bit more than you want to try at this time.
Use a lighter touch. This is very hard for a beginner, or even an old-timer like me! But there is a good chance if you watch some videos of pastel artists, you won’t believe how soft a touch they use. How soft the pastel sticks are make a difference, too. The softer the pastel, the easier it is to use a light touch. Again, easier said than done!
If using a spray fixative, I would recommend Spectrafix. It is the only non-toxic spray that I am aware of – and is one of the few that alter paintings the least. Unfortunately, the price of the fixative is fairly indicative of how good it is. Usually, no matter which spray you use, you will have to reinforce the lightest colors. If you use any of the toxic sprays, please invest in a respirator. You should not, under any circumstances, spray in a non well ventilated area.
One way to protect paintings without framing them is to buy some glassine of tracing paper and use them to cover your paintings.
No pastel I know is will fade after a few months unless you put them in direct sunlight. Student grade or artist grade pastels will last for years as long as you keep them out of direct sunlight. I would be glad to show you my pastels done in college with student grade pastels…40 years ago!
Very nice painting by the way!
Don
February 13, 2018 at 11:16 am #563997I appreciate the helpful teaching advice, Don. Definitely going to try your ideas!
I’m wondering about the part where you said some artists use a wet underpainting. Do you mean something like doing some watercolor first? Or are they wetting the pastels?
C&C welcome and appreciated
February 13, 2018 at 2:31 pm #563996You can use rubbing alcohol or odorless mineral spirits (Gamsol is good) for a wet underpainting.
I use sheet protectors for my unframed pastels.
Lady Mars Orange Marmalade Stapleford
Moderator: OIls, Pastels, Plein Air
Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. -Oscar Wilde
February 13, 2018 at 3:06 pm #564001I appreciate the helpful teaching advice, Don. Definitely going to try your ideas!
I’m wondering about the part where you said some artists use a wet underpainting. Do you mean something like doing some watercolor first? Or are they wetting the pastels?
Yes and yes!
There are lots of ways to do a wet underpainting. As mentioned, you can use rubbing alcohol or OMS – or just plain old water. You can wet the pastel or you can do a watercolor underpainting. In some cases, it may depend on what paper you are using to determine which method you want to use. A while back, we did a Spotlight (our monthly activity thread) on underpainting that might give you some ideas:
https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1029802
Don
February 15, 2018 at 6:14 pm #563999Thanks for the great ideas, stapeliad and Don. Since I already have watercolors and watercolor paper, I decided to use that for a base and put the pastel on top.
I tried to use a lighter touch, and I also used a few Pitt pastel pencils that I had, although the pencils unfortunately led to me using a much tighter approach. This time there was much less dust, partly because now I knew to knock the dust off as I went!
The white pastel on the pup’s face scanned in kind of oddly. So the face looks maybe just a teeny-tiny bit better in real life.
I’m going to see if I can avoid spraying this and using the tracing paper to store it.
(I also posted this pup in the February Watermedia Challenge.)
C&C welcome and appreciated
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