I have been painting for about 25 years. I started in oil and then soft pastel became my true love. However, a collage class lead to acrylic painting and then to mixed media.

 

Experimentation is important in my practice or I become bored. Lately I have been experimenting with soft pastel with a goal to have a more painterly outcome. My materials, tools, and process are different. Many of these ideas come from Dawn Emerson's book, "Pastel Innovations," which I highly recommend.

 

I have written before about using a Gelli plate to create mono-prints as under paintings for a pastel painting. The prints can be in acrylic or in pastel. Sometimes I made an abstract background with acrylic and then found an image to develop on it. Other times I have put paint on the plate and drew an image by pulling wet paint off using a variety of tools. Then I transfer the image to paper using paint or mat medium. Finally I add soft pastel to complete the image. Go to those posts for more details.

 

This time I focused on the drawing using a trace monotype. I am dating myself when I say this is like using carbon paper to transfer a drawing to paper. If you don't know what I mean, enjoy your youth.

 

Start by putting a thin layer of water soluble oil paint on a piece of freezer paper. I tried using Golden Open acrylics but that was not as successful because of the drying time.

 

Next, turn the oil paint side of the paper down on a blank paper. Don't let the freezer paper slide around. I used printmaking paper because it was thinner in case I wanted to do other techniques. However, you can use other types of paper. Experiment. I also tried using Pastelmat because I wanted the tooth for later pastel applications.

 

Now use a ball point pen to draw your image onto the freezer paper on the side that does not have the ink. Try other tools as well to push the oil paint onto the blank paper underneath. You can develop line or shapes for shading. When the drawing is complete, you can remove the freezer paper and you have a beautiful line drawing with oil paint. Here is an example of a drawing I did of a tree using this method.

 

 

Then add your pan pastel and/or stick soft pastel to develop the image. You do not need to wait for the paint to dry. Here are two images that I did using this method.

 

 

In the first image I used too much paint and that caused the background which I ended up liking. With the squirrel I did two other things. I used the pan pastel with a stencil to make the diagonal lines. The other patterns were made with pastel sticks in frottage. I learned that in kindergarten. Put something textured under the paper and rub the pastel stick or charcoal over the top of the paper. The stick picks up the peaks of what is underneath leaving a pattern on the paper. The paper must be thin enough for this to work.

 

Here is another image I created with a trace monotype. The vertical stripes in the background was made with frottage or rubbing pastel on your painting over corrugated cardboard that is underneath the painting. The dots were made with a stencil. I blurred lines and made directional strokes to help with a sense of movement.

 

 

You can see these images and more of my work at www.sueflanagan.com

 

Happy painting,

Sue Flanagan