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Meredith,
There are oil paints that fade, too, as fade-prone pigments will do whether they are in oil, watercolor, pastel or whatever. Alizarin crimson is one example. Sap green is another. No medium provides enough protection to keep a fugitive pigment from fading. But some pigments that are used in other media are not used in pastels because there is greater health risk with them in powdered form, so the manufacturers use substitute pigments to make those colors. Sometimes the pigments they choose do not hold up as well on exposure to light. Then there is the problem of not being able to mix colors in pastel, which makes it necessary for pastel sets to have many more colors than a full palette of oil paints would contain, and manufacturers are compelled to use certain pigments of less than optimum lightfastness in certain places, in order to offer the widest variety of colors, tints and shades.
UV filter glass might help a little, but I wouldn't count on it making enough of a difference to be worth much. More to the point would be to determine which colors, of all the manufacturers' products on the market today, hold up best, and stick to those colors as much as possible.
I'm currently working on clarifying the picture for pastel painters, and on putting a fire under the manufacturers' seats to compel them to look for more lightfast pigments to replace the more fugitive ones they've been using, but my task would be easier, and good results more likely, if the pastel societies would be more cooperative with ASTM, and would participate in this effort.
I think too many pastellists are horrified at the prospect that much of the work they've already done is apt to fade, and they would rather stick their head in the sand and proceed in a state of denial than to acknowledge the truth of the matter and work to improve the medium. If they could see my test panels, I think they'd be shocked into realizing the importance of what I'm doing, and might then be more inclined to help.
Virgil Elliott
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