early paint pigments-not just for breakfast

I think Gamblin Oils uses some, will have to drag out my info on them. I like the old metal colors myself. Check GamblinColors.com if you have time.

well, then we should not stick our brushes in our mouths. I hope theyre not making any merc or lead colors for tube paint. I wonder if van Gogh had mad hatters disease from all the merc, since the colors I most associate with him are yellows and reds

Hmm, we could pull Bob Gamblin into this discussion, he loves to talk about pigments. Of course he has a company, but he has done scads of research and is pretty straightforward.

yeh, Id love to learn how the milling is done. Ive heard that the old way was similar to the Chinese way of making gunpowder, very slow and deliberate.
I wonder how the light fastness is measured in pigments also

It seems that Paris green was understood to be toxic in the early 19th century, so it was gradually substituted for in wall coloring, or else it was coated with shellacs. Thats why the descriptions of rooms decorated with celadon and paris green often discussed how shiny these walls were.

Modern pigments still use some of the toxic metals like Cadmium, but they are in a polymer suspension rather than the suspension of the pure salt. Heres a site

http://lilinks.com/mara/pigments.html

was Paris green the one that contained arsenic? I seem to remember that one colour used on walls did

using pastels isn't too good for you because of inhaling the dust of colours with stuff like cadmium in ...

yep,paris green was acopper acetoarsenide in a chalk mix, yum.
One of the reasons I never took to pastels was my concern that pastels were like asbestos dust, tiny particles , unknown consequences.

true about the dust - and I'm asthmatic - but pastel has got a lovely quality and i do sometimes use it.

Love Dega's pastels, don't you?

I only used pastels briefly adn I dont recall the brand. I only recall that they were soft and made dust where all the "erythrian " colors smelled sweet, so I figured thewy had lead in them.

pastel used in touches over either gouache or acrylic can be great.


Unison pastels are very soft, nice and large and really sensous to use - maybe you should try them again? I would imagine that they are the ones David Prentice uses, having seen his work, you can get large gestural marks from them.

Mind you - pastels are a nightmare to frame!






pastel drawing of the path down to my husband's allotment done in pastel - I FROZE drawing this as the weather was really cold

it is about A2 size

vivien-do you use the sand textured paper for pASTELS?
is an allotment , a parcel of land?

no I don't use sand textured paper - it eats the pastels and is a bit crude as it grabs the pastel and doesn't engender subtlety. It is great for some people but doesn't suit me. I often just use heavy cartridge paper. I rarely do a piece that is totally pastel - usually they are underpainted in acrylics, which extends the visual language and a lot of the painting shows, final marks and scumbles of overlaid colour are in pastel.

Having said that - the allotment is totally pastel. It was done on heavy cartridge paper.

Yes an allotment is a piece of land on a plot given over for growing vegetables - and for husbands to go up to and pretend to be working hard whilst chatting to friends - :wink: don't tell David i said that!




this one is mainly paint and some charcoal and pastel - good old mixed media

I tried pastels, but can't use them. I'd like to, but I have such a heavy hand, I even crumble hard rembrandt pastels. A box an artwork is a habit I can't afford. Once I did a life sized self portrait (7 feet high) in rembrandt pastels, and I used the whole portrait box, some 200 dollars! Even worse, I lost the piece... *d'oh!* Vivien, you seem to have them down. Let me know if you have any tips. I still use them for highlighting and in mixed media, may go back to them someday. Maybe.

I have some of the similar problems with pastels and a heavy hand. I do use oil "pastels" actually a crayon. These allow me to achieve a nice impressionistic effect and the results vary with themperature. Ps Vivien-are you posting your work from digital fotos? or scans?

portal - I'm no expert with pastels! i didn't like Rembrandt pastels for exactly the faults you found. I love Unison - they are fatter and softer and delicious to use! I do mainly use them in mixed media pieces though. You do get through pastels terrifyingly fast for the cost - yet another reason to underpaint!

Farmer - i sometimes use oil pastels - usually with watercolours - they make a fantastic resist. I never do a complete painting in them as they don't suit the way i work.

The pieces I posted are scans because they were small works. On my site the larger works were digital photos (like the 4ft seascapes). I like the results of scans better. I'd like to invest in a bigger scanner at some point when (ha ha) i have some free cash.

art
I rarely mix media. But I would like to experiment with the use of pastel highlights over acrylic paint. But if I use pastel over parts of an acrylic painting would I have to frame the work with glass, even if the pastel is fixed?

JL, I think that you shouldnt fix pastels. It robs them of the very thing that made you choose them, their brilliance and sparkle. Ive seen some pastels over acrylics where the acrylics are lightly sanded which imparts a " Post Drying Scumble " look to the paint, especially if its a little thick. I suppose that pastels can really liven up acrylics cause I find that acrylics tend to be rather flat when used as oils, and getting some brilliant highlights and color perspective may be just the thing that pastels can provide. HMMM maybe Ill look into my self professed denial of acrylics. I love multimedia and the effects the media provide. Like vivien said, oil pastels are a great resist. I even use white crayolas to do that for really hazy foregrounds. You should really consider playing with multi-mixed media. There are no rules but the work in your mind. Whatever you need to draw that work out, is proper. DONT BE A MONOMEDIIST

Today I did a mixed media with colored pencil, airbrushed lacquers and watercolors. Its for a juried artshow where I know the jury and two of them know me, so theyll be looking for my signature works . BUT, Im in a playful mood so I took a large sheet of Darches Smooth 300 lb and did a series of lines and blobs with the colored pencil and watercolrs. Then, I took a sheet of glass pane and laid it atop the work. I then broke the glass and spread the pieces about just a bit so that the pieces are still opposed to their mates and I then airbrushed diffrent hues and values of lacquers on top so that the glass cracks now show through and it looks quite like the pieces of glass are PLATES. (Remember Im a geologist so I carry themes of plate tectonics and strata into my non objective stuff). So In one morning of sitting around with the paper and eating and (yes we sheared 180 sheep -actually this was done by the shearers-all I did was send the dogs in to guide the sheep quietly) My painting was a means to relax after the shearing and telling stories with the shearers .

Anyway, the paintings turned out rather neat. And, as vivien started, all in mixed media.

I still am a bit concerned about pastel reds. The colors of red were either lead, Uranium, iron, or cobalt, in the early days. Today, theyre just as bad as aniline dyes or metal polymer compounds.
I always ask the paint manufacturers and the pigment mfrs, whether there is anMSDS on the color that has me concerned.

I am a clutz with pastels, besides which I just don't like working with them. Reminds me a little of jute macrame, which I also found in my kleenex sometime later. We have two people who show with us who are incredibly good with pastels. ha, ha, someday I will become online savvy, but not yet, re posting pics. From a gallery pov, one has to handle the work extra tenderly, especially if the artist chooses not to fix chalk pastels. Certainly the cover is far from the pastel.