Acid Free Pastel Panels
 

I have been asked to begin painting my pastels on panels. Has anyone used Ampersand's Pastelboards? How about making your own? I know it would be much cheaper.

Wende Caporale gives a recipe in her book, Painting Children's Portraits in Pastel, for creating your own panels using acrylic gesso, pumice on illustration board (100% rag) or untempered masonite. I am unsure of this technique's "acid-free" properties that they are adamant about.

Can anyone offer an elaboration?

You might try the following as an option, I have not personally tried this but it sounds interesting to me - Kitty Wallis paper mounted on Gatorfoam:

pastel panels

Dear Julianne,

I have tried the Ampersand panels and found them too hard for the way I tend to work. The amount of give you like, and the way you work has everything to do with whether a surface is right for you.

I have been working on Wallis paper mounted to board for years, and it's definitely the surface I like best, since it lends itself to underpainting without buckling or getting its tooth filled up.

Recently I have been using the same ground for oils, and love it. You might try the thread that Sharon Knettel's started on Substrates here

Good luck!

The Substrate Queen!
 

Because I work so large I have been forced to investigate other substrates.

I recently finished a large pastel (53"X 69") on DiBond, which is primarily used for sign painting. I had been having MDF panels made but they were really heavy, 38 lbs. unframed. My client had to hang it on a supporting wall of her house. The DiBond, weighs about 21 lbs.

I had a sign company bend back the sides an inch so I could screw my plexiglas cover to the sides. I thought it looked a little tinny, so I had some panels made out of Sintra, an expanded PVC, another outdoor sign material. It is a little heavier, but it is black and quite elegant.

The rest of the procedure is the same using the Golden Acrylic Gesso for Pastel and airbrushing on the final flat tone.

You can just buy the Sintra; most suppliers will cut it to size. I like the quarter inch. You don't have to have a panel made unless it needs bracing like mine. The Sintra has to be coated with the same material on both sides so it will remain flat and completely covered with paint to keep out the UV rays. Otherwise PVC is completely stable and is used in underground plumbing and exterior housing cladding. The Sintra comes in qute a few colors as well.

The DiBond is thin aluminum skins with a polyethylene core. It can be cut to size.

Ah, Sharon. Just the brain I need to pick today... .

I have two big panels of 1/4" black Sintra sitting in the corner of my studio. My plan is to use them as a backing for my charcoal/Nupastel drawings on sanded ABS. The black Sintra is around 6" larger on all sides than the ABS, so it will act as a "mat" for the drawing. I've sprayed the drawing with archival spray varnish. The object of this whole enterprise is to come up with something that doesn't have to be glassed over, which is the big drawback about doing large drawings. Have you ever tried spray varnishing your pastels?

Questions:
1. have you ever glued ABS to Sintra? what do you think, contact cement? I plan to give the Sintra a light sanding first, mostly to knock off slight dings and scratches in my pieces.
2. I'm thinking of putting a piece of wood on the back to put screw eyes in to hang this thing. Again: contact cement, do you think?
3. I thought these plastics only absorbed UVA if they were sanded first.
4. An engineer told me that Sintra is a foam and more susceptable to UVA penetration that regular ABS. Is this wrong?

I'm now going to your other post to read about gessoing Sintra. But you wouldn't need to do this unless you wanted more tooth on your surface, right?

I've been fiddling with these problems for months. Since the drawings aren't commissions I've had to put them on the back burner when I get a lot of paying work through the door.

Linda, Linda Linda!

This is what I have found out so far, after consulting, my plastic guy, the technical support people at Alusuisse ( the manufacturer of Sintra), my husband, a scientist with an engineering backround and his colleague ( specializing in materials) in the engineering department of the University of RI.

A:ABS plastic warps and absorbs moisture. My plastic guy says do not use it.

B: Check with Alusuisse about compatible glues. I had to send away for special glue in California, and was fortunate enough to have a very good cabinet maker make the panels for me. He said the glue fumes were so powerful., they were physcedelic and worse, not to use at home!

C: Alusuisse has a website, you can download information, search under Sintra (PVC).

D: I braced the Sintra panels with 3/4" Sintra. I bought a whole 3/4" panel and had it cut into 2" strips, by the distibutor. Distributors will most often cut the panels to size for you and deliver them to you or
someone else.

E: The company considers Sintra as archival. It is expanded PVC. PVC is used in exterior shingles and underground plumbing, as such it is quite stable. It is not prone to warping and does not absorb moisture like ABS. It is subject to embrittlement when exposed to UVA rays. It should be coated with a paint, sanded lighly first with a 320 or 360 grit paper.

F: You can spray pastels heavily enough to make them resistant to smearing, but many colors especially blue become too dark, almost black. It works well on sanguine drawings however. You might want to talk to Mike Townsend at www.goldenpaints.com. He is very knowledgeable about spraying pastels and probably knows some new wrinkles I haven't heard of . As a matter of fact they have come out with a new varnish, that just walked in my door today. I am excited to try it. They get a lot of requests for ideas about permanently fixing pastels. If your drawings are limited in color his procedure would work for you. It is worth a try.

G: A simpler way would be to have good paper mounted to Gatorboard, do your drawing, then spray away. I do not know the advantage of using ABS plastic. What you have proposed is heavy, cumbersome and probably expensive.

Hope this helps!

Linda,

I wanted to add this information last night but ran out of time. The owner of www.dakotapastels.com, shows his pastels without glazing. You might want to talk to him.

I did not mean to scare you about the plastics, but strangely enough not all of them are compatible. The glues sometime have to melt the plastic so it will adhere. The best person to talk to is your local plastic fabricator. You can find them in the Yellow Pages. It really is not as easy as it seems as I found out.

The technical staff at Alusuisse is very helpful.

Sincerely,

Sharon, when you say ABS absorbs moisture and warps, do you mean it turns and twists along an axis (is this torque? Oh, I am way out of my league here...). Would it not behave itself in a frame, like a zaftig lady in a corset? Or do you mean that it puffs and bulges like a sponge? Wouldn't it be better to absorb moisture rather than dry out, crumble or crack? Would it absorb moisture just by hanging around on the wall, or would you have to leave it in the rain or bury it underground (oh I do hope my paintings don't have to go through that).

The very thin ABS is pretty cheap, around 25 dollars for a 4 x 8 foot piece, and I can cut it up with a utility knife to my specifications. I have some of this lying around on which I will probably use oil paints. The thicker stuff is more expensive but needs no backing to work on. To me, one of the great benefits of working with plastic is that I can sand off a mistake or even an entire bad painting if I feel like it. I just finished a self-portrait (here's the link to it on my website: http://www.lindatraceybrandon.com/bio2.htm ) where I started off with a white skirt and ended up with black slacks after sanding. I wear a mask when I sand this stuff.

I like the idea of mounting a beautiful Twinrocker paper onto Gatorfoam (can I do this myself? does it need to be professionally mounted?).

You know, I think that grounds in general deserve more scrutiny than they generally receive. So many people use linen because of its long history of use, but I see so many old paintings where the linen has crumbled, become moldy, suffers cracks, holes, insect damage, you name it. I appreciate what Virgil Elliot is doing with paint pigment permanance and I'm conducting my own primitive experiments with putting paintings and pastels in the sun; the pigments hold up pretty well. It's everything underneath them that is going the way of all flesh.

You are an amazing resource to have on this Forum. I bless Cynthia every day for providing the magnet that attracts passionate, opinionated, determined and obsessed artists willing to share arcane information.

I'm off to my lair to brood and putter, visit websites and make phone calls. Tomorrow I'm seeing a flayed cadaver as part of my anatomy study (happily, this won't be taking place in my studio). If I don't get sidetracked by this experience I hope to tackle my plastic dilemma as soon as possible.

Twist and Turn!
 

Linda,

Will not lay flat! When I heard about the ABS plastic on this site, I was psyched! I asked my plastic fabricator about it he said, " Why in **** would you want to use that stuff, it absorbs moisture and warps as soon as it comes in, use Sintra instead." Hokay!

As to mounting your own, it depends on the gsm of the paper and the right cement. It seems to me a decent framer could do it reasonably. Check with Madame Saper about that.

I am glad to see you are using a quality pigmented paper like Twinrocker. It is much less likely to fade than the current popular pastel papers. They are about to make a run of their beautiful cornflower blue paper, you could see if you could get some larger sizes made without paying for a complete custom set up. $$$.

Sincerely,

Great self portrait! Actually you really are adding some superb pictures. I especially love the two boys, the one reading and the plain head. The color is great and he looks so alert.

As to being a great resource, thanks, but you will find when you kick around long enough and are curious and desperate enough you will ferret out amazing stuff!

Cadavers! As Ingres said about anatomy, "Cette science affreuse!"

Have a ball!