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Ludlow Art Society INFORMATION SHEET 3: Supports and Grounds for Pastels The art of Pastel has a long history, outline drawings using coloured earths date back to prehistoric times. The modern use of pastel as a full painting medium developed about 250 years ago. Pastel is one of the simplest and most direct methods of painting. Patel sticks are almost entirely pure pigment with no medium to crack the paint surface or degrade the purity of the colours. The only limitations of pastel are its relative fragility and limited range of colour. Although blending of colours is possible by crosshatching different colours and rubbing the surface glazing effects are limited. Application by direct marks is more characteristic of the medium. Supports. Technically a support is the material on which the painting is made. It can be paper, board, canvas, and wood of various kinds. Papers: The most common papers sold for pastel use are Canson and Ingres papers, each range has a distinctive grain. Fabriano Tiziano papers are another type. All of these papers are marketed as acid free, come in different weights and in a range of colours. The late Christopher Assheton-Stones PS maintained that these papers were not light fast particularly the darker ones. The standard method of testing for light fastness is to place a slip of the paper in a book with half of it ex[posed. Place it on a window cill exposed to strong sunlight for 4-6 weeks. Any tendency to fading will become apparent. An alternative to the specialist papers is a good qulity acid free cartridge paper. Some cartridge papers are too smooth but a smooth cartridge can be improved by treating with a ground but a good paper with a grain sympathetic to pastel when availailable is Canson à Grain. In general if a paper is to be used for a fully developed pastel painting as distinct from a drawing a weight of 200g/m2 or more is best. Watercolour papers make good, if expensive, supports for pastel. Sometimes a failed watercolour can be reworked effectively as a pastel. Fine sand paper is also offered for sale as a support for pastels–though I can never understand why anyone would attempt a serious painting or expend a great deal of time working on a support which must be of doubtful permanence. Boards: The acid free pulp boards used by picture framers and museum conservators make ideal supports for pastel paintings. They can either be used untreated or with an applied ground. Conservation boards in ovory or white are self coloured–mounting boards usually have coloured papers laminated to a pulp core. These can be scratched or marked by rough treatment. The heavy grey millboards and thin 2mm MDF boards used by framers make good supports as do the thicker MDF and hardboards sold in DIY stores.The surface colour of these boards changes over time and so a prepared ground needs to be applied to them. The advantage which boards have as a support iis that they allow painters to create sympathetic surface textures with the grounds that are applied. Canvas: In the 18th Century it was customary to work pastels on paper glued to a linen canvas. Degas was happy to use stretched canvas as a support for pastels but Sickert, a devoted admirer of Degas, was not. His objection to stretched canvas was the risk of vibration and its effect in dislodging particles of colour.1 Nevertheless a fine cotton or linen canvas glued to a firm board does make a sympathetic support for the application of pastel. GROUNDS Grounds are applied to a support to provide an inert layer between the support and the layers of pigment in the paint surface. A full discussion can be found in 2Mayer . In pastel painting the primary use of a ground is to improve the surface quality of the support in some way. Generally all that may be required is a wash of gouache or acrylic applied to a paper orboard to tone or adjust its colour. A colured ground could be developed into an underpainting which broadly defines the composition. More robust supports like pulp and MDF boards open up other possibilities— textured grounds of varying degrees of roughness as well as colour can be laid on them. Traditionally such grounds were prepared from powdered pumice mixed with a RABBIT SKIN glue size. A more convenient modern alternative is to mix the pumice with a matt acrylic gel medium or acrylic gesso primer. Once dry the ground can be lightly sanded to achieve a texture appropriate to the subject. Pumice grounds have the added advantage the the texture creates a tooth which will hold layers of pastel firmly making the use of fixatives unnecessary. It is possible to buy a pastel card with a tooth similar to fine sandpaper–the cards come in a range of colours. The surfaces are rather bland and individually prepared grounds are offer greater variety. There is satisfaction to be derived from crafting a painting from simple basic materials, accidental effects can be exploited and many discoveries made as the work progresses. References: 1 Sickert, W. R. : 'A Free House.' Robert Kirk |