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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

A Simple Way To Recycle Pastel Paper


'Two Against One'                    8x10                   pastel               ©Karen Margulis
I knew I wanted lots of texture. I had a painting idea but I didn't have the right surface to make it work. I had a stockpile of textured boards that I had made myself with pumice and gesso but they were gone. I needed to make more. I didn't have any pumice though.

I had another idea so I turned up the music and got to work. I took out my bottle of Liquitex Clear Gesso, a gesso brush and a bottle of purple Golden fluid acrylic paint. The clear gesso has just enough grit to add texture to a surface. It would be perfect to cover up some old (bad) paintings. I had several of these duds done on Pastelbord that I have been wanting to recycle.

clear gesso and liquid acrylic paint
 The clear gesso is colorless so I decide to tint it with some fluid acrylic paint. I choose a deep purple. It was a great choice. The purple mixed with the pastel pigment on the boards and made a wonderful collection of dull middle value toned surfaces. On some of them you can still see ghost images of the previous paintings. I can't wait to use them!  I had enough purple gesso so I coated some old paintings sone on Uart and mat board as well.

The recycled papers and boards

Once the newly recycled boards were dry I got to wok on my painting. I was in the mood for a snow scene. I revisited my Chicago photos and found one that spoke to me.  Below is the preliminary sketch. I played with the umbrella color. I tried yellow first but it was too predictable. Next I tried coral and that made me happy.  When I was satisfied with the details I added some shaved pastel snow dust. The dull purple of the new surface was perfect for my painting.




detail of the figures




1 comment:

  1. Oh that worked well! I love the colors you got on those surfaces.

    I don't usually work over older paintings because I like seeing how much I've improved and occasionally I see a tweak that'll make it a lot better. But I could see doing something like that deliberately just to get the effect, sketch in an unrelated underpainting and then go over it with something. I could do it on purpose to get something like that and have a ghost image.

    I'd have to mean it from the start though because I really hate working over previous stuff.

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