Pastelmat experiences

wakeupkitty.pal (73)@wakucat - witnessin ᴀʀᴛ & ᴀʀᴛɪꜱᴛꜱ • 2 days ago

I'm still captivated by the fish. What have I been up to these past few days? Among other things, I painted a fish on a background I made and sprayed with hairspray several times. That wasn't a success. The biggest problem was that the pastel didn't stick, and the yellow I used turned pink due to the light. I couldn't solve this problem by removing the pastel and replacing it with white. White also turned pink, then I tried using just orange, but that didn't work either. The whole thing became very crumbly, and I ended up spraying it with hairspray, hoping all the crumbs would dissolve. That didn't happen; it became a grainy, ugly mess, and not worth looking at.

Also not worth looking at so far is the watercolor I'm trying. I first tried it on watercolor canvas, and that turned out to be absolutely terrible. If I understand the review from someone who does a lot of watercolors, that might also be due to the canvas. I started using cheap watercolors in a booklet specifically designed for this purpose. The size is 21 x 21 cm and the paper is 300 gsm. This should be sufficient for wet-on-wet painting. Well, I haven't actually done that, and yet my paper warps, which naturally makes it difficult to complete assignments.

Incidentally, for some unknown reason, I keep seeing videos made by less successful YouTubers, and it doesn't surprise me that they weren't successful.

So I just mess around or watch what they do and try to figure it out for myself. I now also have an Ugly Sketchbook for watercolor.

Since there are two more painting classes on Wednesday, I'd like to do something with watercolor, although I have no idea what. The classes aren't very good at teaching techniques, so I'm just working ahead. When you're in a group and everyone is working on their own project, there's little opportunity to ask for advice. There are simply too many of us, and that's actually three or four people.
So I'm basically just figuring it out myself and hoping to find something I'm having trouble with before Wednesday so I can ask specific questions or try something out.

By the way, I still want to make a Beta fish, but right now I'm still working on the red parrot cichlid.
The fish I started last week in painting class turned out pretty well, but it's too big to fit within the frame's mat. So this morning I started with one painted on pastelmat paper. This is special paper for pastels. To be honest, I don't notice much difference compared to the bamboo paper I use. I can't say I can use many layers, it's difficult to blend, I have to use a lot of force with my fingers, and when I used the pastel sponge, it tore. So, the only thing I could do to create the background was to keep trying to rub in the previous layer with each new layer of chalk. The downside is that a light color on a darker background disappears when I try to rub it in, which I find quite frustrating. Oddly enough, the yellow doesn't seem to work as a light trap here either, although it doesn't turn pink like the previous one. So far, the only reason I can see for the many layers is because otherwise you can't blend the chalk properly, and then it doesn't look as good.
A negative here too is that small, hard pieces clearly blend worse and leave scratches.

When I consider that one sheet of pastel mat paper costs the same as a 26-sheet pad of bamboo paper, I don't think I'll be buying special paper very often.

I hope I can finish this fish tonight. Then I'll have two days left to try one more piece before the painting class starts again. Why the rush? Because I hope that what's finished at the painting class can be fixed, since I still haven't received a can of fixative. And what I give away does need to be protected and hopefully is better protected than with hairspray, although I do have some doubts because of a comment the teacher made.

watercolour