Post #158849 by THOR's on Sat, May 14, 2005 7:06 AM

Hewey!!
I like the direction a lot!! A few things I have learned about pastels is that the paper is half the battle!!

There was this really great pastel Artist named Sheila Rynman that did this pastel workshop for some of the Imagineers few years back, She was known for her beautiful wild life pastel paintings and how she captured lightand detail..yet loose and fresh (not her, her art)

She used to describe the paper as having all these tiny pits and valleys in them that varies depending on the paper you use.

Since patels are a build up of powder really, she would suggest to find a "toothier" suface to work onto get the best results. Once all the little valleys are filled with packed pastel powder,the piece begins to look messy and you find you can't seem to get the color to come off the stick anyore. Pastel paper is expensive so she would also do little practice pastel paintings on sheets of fine sandpaper..like 400 to 600 ot wet dry paper.

She was amazing how she could control the things..they were loose yet looked full of light and energy and detail. Anyway, your tikis are a great subject for this.

There are technigues where you can do color washes to tint the paper in the beginning by using turpentine or rubbing alchohol to "smear around" a base layer of pastel color with a brush. It dryes in minutes and the "powder" of the pastel permeates deep into the paper grain. This preserves the "tooth" of the paper for more detail to be built up with the sticks.

Also, begin to recognize harder from softer pastels. If you really start getting into this, you will want to use harder pastels in the beginning and softer ones as you build layers. But these are for the really layerd types of paintings that look very rich and impressionistic. Hard pastels are brands like "nu-pastel""Rembrant" is a med to soft pastel. Then there are the french ones like Senillie (can't spell it. They are like painting with a stick of butter.

Last of all..many of the best pastel artists I know say NEVER use fixative on the final result. It deadens the colors and destroys the latered complexity. They say to carefully matt the drawing and put it into a frame where the glass does not touch the surface.

I hope this is helpul Just have fun!! Just wanted to share this because it's frustating enough just to make an image as it is in your mind. Pointers on controling the medium will give you a much easier path to great results!! GOOD LUCk!!!!!!!!!

[ Edited by: THOR's on 2005-05-14 07:12 ]