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Monday, September 14, 2009

Experiments with Grounds - 8

As part of my ongoing experiments with grounds, I offer a pastel. I hadn't intended to experiment with pastel surfaces at this time, but I am mentoring a pastel student this week, and I thought it'd be fun to try a new thing or two. I decided to salvage some of the hardboard panels that I had prepped with three coats of Blick Master Gesso - it's a surface that, as I've said, is too slick for my way of oil painting - by adding added two coats of Golden Acrylic Ground for Pastels. I ended up with a surface with a medium amount of grit to it.

It doesn't hold the pastel as well as Wallis paper, and because it doesn't have as fine a tooth, it is best suited for broad applications of pastel rather than detail work. Also, it "grabs" softer pastel better than hard pastel. For this one, I used mostly Mount Vision pastels. I ended up putting a light coat of Lascaux fixative on it - just in case.

"Ebb Tide"
8x10, pastel/panel