Plein Air Tip #1 Mounting Pastel Paper

'What Lies Beyond' 8x10 pastel ©Karen Margulis
purchase painting $95

I'm heading out west tomorrow to attend the 1st Annual Plein Air Convention in Las Vegas. I am excited to be a part of this event. I am looking forward to learning from the wonderful artists who will be presenting and painting as well as the other artists attending...750 of us! So in honor of Plein Air (and because I won't have time to post while I am there) I have prepared a series of posts on plein air. For the next week I will share one of my plein air paintings along with a helpful tip for painting outside. I hope you will enjoy this series!

Plein Air Tip #1 Mounting your Pastel Paper

There are some good reasons to premount your pastel paper to an archival board for a plein air outing.

• It is nice to have a more rigid support to paint on.
• You can paint without needing a backing board.
  
• If you want to do wet underpaintings you don't have to worry about the paper buckling.
  
• It is helpful to have premounted paper if you are in a plein air event.
  
• It is much easier to quickly frame a painting that has already been mounted to a board.

You have some options for mounting your favorite paper.

• Use Ampersand Pastelbord which is a masonite board with a sanded surface. These are awesome for plein air but the drawback is that they can take up space and add weight to your bag which might be a concern.
• Purchase premounted paper. Several brands of pastel paper offer premounted papers in various sizes including Uart and Wallis.
• Purchase professionally drymounted paper from Central Art Supply. They mount paper to 100% cotton museum board and sell both Uart and Wallis packages. I bought some for the workshop I took with Richard McKinley and it was wonderful. Here is the link for Central Art Supply.
• Do it Yourself....I mount my own paper using Crescent Perfect Mount self adhesive Mat Board. See my post here on mounting your own paper.

Please be sure to visit again for the next plain air tip!