Friday, October 31, 2008

Into the Light

"Into the Light"
Pastel on Pastelbord
copyright
Jan Gibson


This was done for a challenge at Let's Make Art and it was a challenge for me. It was a challenge because I haven't painted that many cats and this is another painting on Pastelbord by Ampersand which is a fairly new support for me. It was also a challenge because of the cat's face emerging out of the dark and into the light. I wasn't sure that I could get that effect right.

But, I'm fairly pleased with this painting. I'm not so pleased with the darkening of the pastel when I spray it with fixative. You may remember the little bunny that I did. I sprayed it with a common, rather cheap fixative and it also turned very dark.

This time I used the expensive Lascaux fixative because I'd heard that it didn't change the color of the art. I followed the advice of many artists who have said to use very light layers of spray and not to saturate the painting with the fixative. Unfortunately, even with that advice, the pastel still darkened quite a bit and also left my dark background very flat looking.

The pastel pencils I use are water soluble and I'm beginning to think that any moisture whatsoever is going to melt the pastel enough to darken it. This would render glassless framing pretty much out of the question unless I can find some pastel pencils that won't melt with moisture.


So, this little kitty will get framed the old-fashioned way and I'll continue the search for a way to frame pastel without glass!


1 comment:

Pet Portrait Artists said...

This is lovely Jan, enjoying your posts finding out about glassless pastels, thank you for all the links. Just joined lets make art! Cool, off to investigate : )