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| Welcome to Arcadia: Demos/Down East Sunset, page 2 |
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Down East Sunset, page 2 |
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At this point, much to my dismay, I had to stop and use fixative. One reason I had wanted to try velour was because I had read it didn't require much fixing. Well, it does. When I tapped the back of the picture lightly to shake off any loose pastel dust, half of the picture fell off and wafted away in the breeze. Aghh! So I reapplied the color, then fixed it with a workable fixative.
Why don't I like fixative? Because it makes the colors darker, but primarily because it also makes them more transparent, allowing more of the background color to show through. In this case it turned out not to be much of a problem, but sometimes it's a royal pain. |
 I have a light touch, meaning - in this case - that most of the pastel is sitting on the surface of the velour, not worked down into it. (Probably why it sifted off so easily!) This made it easier to layer the colors. |
Once I had "fixed" the image, I turned my attention to the water. Here I wanted stronger detail, so I switched back to using the tips of my pastels and applied color with firmer, more definite strokes. I used my entire range of blues to create the wave effect, plus some purple for depth, and a little yellow and orange here and there to reflect the sky. I'd been a little intimidated by velour because I remembered from past experience that you couldn't do much erasing on it. However, I was pleased to discover that it enables you to work in layers quite easily. The top layer will either blend with or completely cover the lower layers, depending on how vigorously you apply the pastel. Since I like to "feel" my way through a painting, rather than planning it all out in advance, the velour suited my approach rather nicely; I could change my shapes, directions, even colors at any stage with very little fuss. |
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