Pastels and Water...How Wet Can your Paper Get?

'Purple Rain'        8x10          pastel      ©Karen Margulis   $145 here

I have been having so much fun exploring pastels and water.  I have been spraying my finished pastels with water and seeing what develops. It is kind of like watching a polaroid photo unfold. (remember them?)  I love the wild abandon and unexpected outcomes.  If you want to be loose and less controlling in your work it is an excellent technique to try.  If I haven't convinced you to try spraying water on your pastels yet have a look at the last few blog posts!

The only issue I have with the process is that I seem to have gotten the best results on Ampersand Pastelbord.  I like this surface but it is more expensive than regular sanded papers and for such an experimental technique I don't want to spend $6 plus on an experiment that may not work!

• UArt to the rescue!   So for today's painting I decided to try just a plain unmounted piece of Uart paper. It happened to be 500 grit.  I taped it to my foamcore support and blocked in my painting with Terry Ludwig pastels.  I sprayed the clouds with some water and to my delight the pastel lifted and formed puddles. I got the paper pretty wet!  Yes it did buckle and wave, quite a bit actually.  I let it dry somewhat and then i covered the surface with glassine paper and placed some heavy books on top for several hours.

The painting dried flat after being weighed down with the books and a cool thing happened. The glassine paper had wrinkled and made an impression onto the wet pastel. These lines dried and formed my purple rain!

Now I know that I can experiment to my heart's content without worrying about expensive surfaces!  This Uart paper sure does take abuse!