I am certainly not the first pastel artist to use this surface but it was a pleasant surprise for me. I was ordering some paint recently when I noticed the vendor had Micaceous Iron Oxide and I had to order a bottle. I bought the fluid acrylic paint from Golden.

I spread the acrylic paint on my sanded pastel paper which was a waste of paper because this acrylic paint has a grit to it. It will create a  sanded surface. So, save your sanded paper and apply it to a quality paper. It can be watercolor or printmaking paper. I used 240 lb. acrylic paper from Strathmore for my future applications. The heavier the paper, the less likely it will warp.

Apply it with a soft brush. I like a regular surface so I applied it in one direction and then went perpendicular to that to thoroughly cover the paper. If you like random texture then make unpredictable strokes. However, make sure you eliminate any globs of paint. One coat was enough.

This is the paper after it dried. It is a nice warm gray with a slight iridescence. The paper has a tooth or grit to it that I would say is like a medium to coarse sanded pastel paper. Now it is ready for pastel. Use it like you would any sanded surface.

Here is my 10 x 8 in.  pastel painting called Fall Shimmer. The photograph doesn't do the painting justice because there is a little sparkle all over the painting. It is subtle and not gaudy. It looks like I used some iridescent pastels.

Try this. I think you will like it. I did. Let me know what subject you painted and please share a photo.

Until next time,

Sue and Suzy, the artist with the split personality

www.sueflanagan.com

In a previous blog I showed how I experimented with making mono-prints with soft pastel and acrylic mediums  on a Gelli plate. I put powdered Pan Pastel on the Gelli plate and then poured some acrylic blending medium to liquefy the pastel. Then I spread it on the plate with a brayer and printed the image on mulit media paper. I brushed transparent gesso over the dry print so that I would have some tooth for further applications of pastel.  

I had no preconceived subject matter in mind when I created these prints. My goal was to look at them and discover the subject matter in the colors and patterns. I have now done three completed paintings from this process. Refer to my last post for "Night Lights." www.sueflanagan.com/blog/155364/experiments-in-pastel-painting

Here is another one of the prints that I developed. It seemed very clear to me that it was wood. It looked like a very old shed door. One area even looked like a door knob.

I used soft pastel to develop the painting trying to apply as little as possible. I wanted the under painting that was the pastel mono-print, to show and do most of the work. This is the final painting after I applied soft pastel. It is called "The Old Shed Door."

I asked my Facebook friends for feedback on another print. Several people saw a water scene and that spoke to me as well. However, exactly what type of water scene should it be? I thought about water fowl in water or water lilies. I imagined fishermen that I recently saw at Papoose Lake. But, all of it seemed forced to me. I walked away from it and when I came back an idea came to me. The white areas looked like cloud reflections and there could be some reflections of vegetation. Can you see that?

I added some soft pastel and then used pipe foam insulation to rub it gently into the paper for a dry under-painting. This established the big shapes for me. I know it is hard to visualize but I know where this is going. I like putting other colors into my greens to make it more interesting.

I got so involved in painting that I forgot to take another picture of the process. Here is the final painting. This is a 9 x 12 in. pastel painting called "Reflected Light." Almost half of this is barely touched The blue water area is mostly the pastel mono-print.

I am finding this process to be great fun and a way to exercise my imagination. It also makes for a loose rendering. I hope this sparked your imagination.

Sue and Suzy, the artist with the split personality

www.sueflanagan.com

This is "Floral Suggestion" a 7 x 5 in. pastel painting on acrylic ink. My goal was to use as little pastel as possible on top of acrylic ink. I just wanted an impression of two large flowers in a glass. I did not have a photo or still life reference. This was just an intuitive approach with an imagined still life.

When planning a pastel painting, I have discovered that I have more success with acrylic ink under paintings on sanded paper. I tried using water color paper with acrylic inks. I then applied a transparent pastel ground on top of the ink when it was dry. This wasn't as successful because I didn't like the coarse tooth of the paper.

In this case, I used Uart paper (500 grit). I applied drops of acrylic ink and sprayed it with water. Then I tilted the paper to let the ink flow. This was the result. It has nice dark shapes and some light areas where I lifted out the ink with a paper towel when it was wet.

Now, time to add pastel. Here is the next stage.

This is the point when I have to be careful and know when to stop. I added a few more strokes to suggest petals and walked away.

When I returned I just added a couple of lines and signed it.

I tried the same approach with the thought of another floral but this time it would have small flowers and greenery that would look like wild flowers. Here is the acrylic ink under-painting.

I was having so much fun and I put in too much detail with the pastel! Ugh!

The next day, I added a deeper color to the background on the right. This is the final painting.

To my surprise, I am enjoying this approach. For the best result, let the under-painting show through. That is just my opinion.

As always, experiment with every painting and enjoy the journey!

Sue and Suzy, the artist with the split personality

www.sueflanagan.com

Acrylic inks are not new to some pastel artists but they are to me. The inks were a Christmas gift and I started experimenting with them in my art journal. Even though I had mixed success, I decided to try them as an under-painting for a pastel portrait. "Anticipation" is a 12 x 9 in.  painting of one of my many beautiful nieces who was looking forward to college.

I took a photo of Sara when she was standing by a kitchen window. I caught this moment just as she glanced up at me. It wasn't the best photo but I had enough to work with.

I came across a sheet of watercolor paper in my hunt for a surface. It looked like it was a cold press paper with rough texture. I soaked and stretched the paper stapling it to a board to prevent buckling.  I did the drawing and transferred the silhouette to the paper when it was dry. Then, I poured inks primarily for the background, hair and some of the shadow shapes.

Then I added pastel to the face and diluted it with with water.

I know. It looks ghoulish. This is the point in every painting when I wonder what good could come out of this?

I am accustomed to working on sanded paper. The watercolor paper was too rough for me. So, I put Golden's pastel ground on top of this under painting to create a sanded surface. Brushing the liquid on the surface blurred the image a little where I applied pastel but not too much.The acrylic ink was not affected at all because it is permanent when it is dried.

Golden's pastel ground dries transparent. It is important to check the label of your product because some pastel grounds are opaque. That would totally cover up the under-painting. Another transparent option is clear gesso.

When it was dry, I finished with pastel. I had to erase the ear and put it in the correct position and make a few other corrections along the neckline and eyes. I added some pastel lightly to the background but let a lot of the acrylic show through.

I am looking forward to using the acrylic inks in future pastel paintings. It is particularly useful in establishing dark areas. This could be very helpful for people who do not have enough dark pastels.

Until next time,

Sue and Suzy, the artist with a split personality

It is so very dangerous for me financially to go into an art store like Blick! My intention was to only buy some pouring medium. Unfortunately, Gelli plates were in the same aisle. This is a gel printing plate to print patterns onto paper. Recently, I have been reading "Pastel Innovations" by Dawn Emerson. One of her techniques is to print interesting backgrounds for her pastel paintings. She has printing presses. I thought this might be an economical alternative for me.

In the past I made a gelatin plate from unflavored gelatin poured into a cookie sheet with sides. This was a lot of fun but it has to be refrigerated to keep it solid. It is also fragile because it is easily scored and it has a limited life. So, of course, I had to buy the Gelli plate at Blick. This is what it looks like. It feels soft and rubbery. I hope it will be more durable.

I used Canson Multi Media or Stonehenge paper for my prints. You also need a brayer, acrylic paints that are not too thick, and items that will make marks on the plate but they cannot be sharp. Once you have incised the plate, it is damaged and will always have this mark in your print. I used bubble wrap, plastic stencils, corrugated cardboard, leaves, the cardboard sleeve from my Starbucks coffee, netting, etc. Paint departments in hardware stores have a lot of tools as well.

Next, you dot paint colors all over the plate and then use the brayer to spread the paint over the plate. Be sure to clean the brayer immediately when you are done. Just roll it over a piece of paper.

Put your items with texture onto the plate. Paint is pulled off the plate when you lift the item. When you are finished putting  texture on the plate then put a sheet of paper down and gently press it all over with your hand.

Pull the paper off from one end.

Voila, you have a print!

You can print the same paper several times using different colors and textures. These prints are to spark your creativity. What do you see? What would you paint on top of these papers? Or, maybe you would rip them up for a collage.

Since this is acrylic, you can use several mediums to paint or draw over this. My goal was to use it for a pastel painting. Since I like more tooth to grab pastel, I covered my sheets of paper with clear or transparent gesso. When this dries you can see the acrylic pattern through the gesso. Now you have tooth or a gritty texture to layer pastel. Do not use regular gesso because it is opaque and will cover your acrylic print.

I looked at a stencil and part of it looked like a flower pot. So I used that part of the stencil to form the pot. Then I developed imaginary flowers for the pot. You can see some of the background in the pot. The acrylic print gives depth and interest to the painting.

The pastel can totally cover the background or if it is applied lightly, you can still see the acrylic background. Here is another example where a lot of the background is still showing.

Sometimes, an idea comes quickly and other times you have to leave the print alone for a few days before it speaks to you. This is a fun and playful way to paint! I feel it is visually very interesting. Give it a try. There are a lot of YouTube videos on Gelli plate printing.

Sue and Suzy, the artist with the split personality

www.sueflanagan.com

The tip is simple. Save your soft pastel dust and little bits of pastel that are too small to handle! You can make a beautiful pastel stick out of it. Do you see all of this dust on my easel after I have finished a painting?

I brush it into one of three Ziploc bags. One bag has dust of cool colors (blues, purples) and one has warm colors (reds, yellows). Since I do a lot landscapes I often have a lot of greens. That is my third bag. I can also put little bits or remnants of pastels in the appropriate bag. The brand of pastel does not matter. When I have collected enough pastel, I make sure the air is out of the bag and that it is tightly sealed. Then I use a rolling pin to crush the bits into a fine dust. Or you can use a mortar and pestle if you have one.

Then pour the dust onto a paper plate. Slowly add distilled water and mix it thoroughly with a palette knife. The pastel should be moist and stiff. Adding too much water makes the mixture too thin to form into a stick. Since I like rectangular sticks, I use two popsicle or craft sticks as a mold. I swipe the palette knife along the top of the two sticks for smooth edges.

To separate the sticks from the wet pastel paste, spray the palette knife with water and slide in between the stick and the pastel. That will release the stick and leave a fairly smooth edge. This is what you have. Let it dry thoroughly!

When it is dry, I use an Xacto knife to cut it into useful sizes. If I want smoother edges, I can sand the sides with fine sandpaper.

Now I have three sticks that are a very natural green. I have found that the sticks I make like this are useful grayed colors. They have been particularly useful in plein air painting. Also, think of the money you saved.

For those of you who like rounded sticks, I'm told you can roll the paste. If anyone has any suggestions to improve this process, please comment.

Sue and Suzy, the artist with a split personality

www.sueflanagan.com

This is "Nature Yellow Diad" a 5 x 7 pastel on paper that was inspired by vegetation. On a recent plein air excursion to the Pilcher Park greenhouse in Joliet, I was fascinated by the tropical vegetation and the abstract patterns within them. So, I took a lot of photos.

Back home I used Photoshop to put them to the gray scale and printed out a few that I thought had possibilities.

I could have cropped them in Photoshop but I chose to explore the photos through a view finder and this is the part of one photo that I thought was interesting. This became my inspiration. Sorry for the poor photo. This is a low resolution photo of a low resolution photo. However, you can see the interesting shapes and patterns that interested me.

So, my design is nature. I randomly chose the primary color of orange, not green out of my bag of possible choices. My next choice for the palette was "Diad". That means the other color had to be two positions from orange on the color wheel. I chose yellow. See my other blogs for my "baggy method" to abstract art. I also decided that these colors would NOT be intense oranges and yellows but dulled versions. Some of my recent abstracts have been extremely colorful so I wanted to bring down the color intensity.

So, these are the pastels I chose out of my box but later I added a few others for more value shifts. When black is added to yellow to darken it, then the color shifts to green.

Here is the beginning phase of the painting on U-Art paper.

As I developed it I put in a lot of rows of the spiky cactus. I liked those fine lines in the composition. However, that became too busy so I erased a lot and blurred other parts. I kept only those that were near the center of interest. I tried to keep some spheres in focus and others blurred as if they were emerging. The photo is just inspiration. I was not trying to copy it. And that is how "Nature Orange Diad" was created.

Sue and Suzy, the two personalities of Sue Flanagan

"X Blue Green Diad" is the next abstract experiment with soft pastels. I wanted a more subtle, soft expression this time.

An "X" pattern was pulled from my plastic baggy that contains designs. Blue Green was pulled from the second bag as the main color for the painting. "Diad" was chosen to tell me the rest of the palette. A diad is two positions next to blue green on the color wheel. I could go in either direction. I chose yellow green. I didn't want the X to be centered or too obvious. This is my start with the initial colors I chose.

The soft pastel was then dissolved with rubbing alcohol using a brush. I liked the drips and wanted to keep some of them but always keep open to possibilities.

When this was dry, I started to apply pastel.

I wasn't happy with the painting and realized I needed more pastels and I needed a lighter neutral around the X. Here are the extra soft pastels that I chose.

Here is the progression of the painting. I worked on a focal point and lightened the negative space around the X pattern.

Here are a few final touches with some more yellow green. Done!

Sue and Suzy

In a previous blog I discussed how pastel can be dissolved with any liquid providing the paper or panel can take it. Pastel can also be applied on top of watercolor, gouache, acrylic, oil or any compatible combination for some interesting results. Here is an example of an orange strip of another medium and blue pastel on top. Remember, the support (paper or panel) for your painting has to accept the liquid so check first.

Note the last strip. The orange pastel was rubbed into the paper without using a liquid. When the blue is put on top, it physically mixes with the orange. Since they are complements, this mixture becomes a gray. In the other examples you can see the orange cleanly coming through the blue pastel because the orange is dry and cannot physically mix with the blue. 

Here are some words of caution especially when using acrylic and oil. If you put a thick layer of acrylic or oil down first, you can fill the tooth of the paper. Then the pastel does not have the tooth or texture it needs to grab the surface. So, use a wash of acrylic and plenty of odorless mineral spirits when using oil. I prefer Gamsol for OMS. Also, remember the rule that oil paint can be put on top of acrylic but acrylic paint can not be put on top of oil paint.

In the example above, I used other media to make a solid orange strip but you can manipulate the medium to take full advantage of it's properties. Here are just a few examples.

I put black gesso on a panel and then used crackle paste in a stencil to make this pot. The type of crackle medium I used was more of a liquid and transparent when it dried. I put pastel on top of the dry crackle. The pastel grabbed it in an unpredictable way providing an interesting visual texture suitable for a clay pot.

In this landscape, I added transparent gesso randomly to add more texture to an already sanded board with tooth. Those marks grabbed the pastel and helped to make the grass and the ground cover.

In the next painting, I used thin washes of oil paint for an under painting. When you let the thinned oil paint drip, it makes luscious marks. Look carefully in the trees where I let some of this show through.

Here, gouache was used under the pastel. I let the colors of the gouache peak through.

If you have a disappointing watercolor painting, try putting pastel on top to fix it. If you forgot to save the white, well, there are lots of white pastels. In this painting, I used watercolor under the pastel. In fact, a lot of the blue in the sky is untouched watercolor.

Pastel is put on top of a mixed media collage in this painting.

Remember that pastel on top of another medium means that the painting has to be framed under glass.

So, try it all! It's fun. There are so many possibilities and so little time.

Sue and Suzy

After watching an instructional video by master pastelist, Richard McKinley, I have decided to take on a challenge. I am going to do 5 paintings of the same subject starting with different under paintings. He suggested a subject that you successfully painted before. I chose a scene where I painted on location in one of Richard's workshops near Bozeman, Montana. This is Spanish Creek. I had to slowly drive through a buffalo ranch to get to this beautiful but smokey scene. Not long into the painting a moose came out for a drink. I did these two paintings several years ago.

All of the experimental paintings are going to be done on Art Spectrum Colourfix paper. The first one was on white paper and I used gouache to block in the large shapes. This experiment was done from a photo of another part of Spanish Creek.

It has been awhile since I use gouache. I then used layers of soft pastel to finish this piece. This is the final painting, 9 x 12 in, Smokey Spanish Creek.

I will be consistent and continue to use gouache on black paper, a warm color paper and a cool color paper. Then I am going to try just a black and white value under painting which I have never done before. Even though I have experimented with many kinds of under paintings and many different papers, I haven't done the exact same subject with different approaches. It should be interesting. Next time, I will use black paper.