I had no idea what to paint today, so I just started randomly putting NuPastel on paper, and then I rubbed it in with a paper towel. Now I had an underpainting (of sorts) but didn’t know what to do with it — at first. Then I realized it reminded me of autumn trees.
My trees are cartoonish, but the whole picture is straight from my imagination, based on the colors and shapes of the random “underpainting”.
Not at all! Not according to Maggie Price, in her 2007 book Painting with Pastels: Easy Techniques to Master the Medium.
She says there is no requirement to use an underpainting, and then gives examples of when you might not want to. One is for when you’re using unsanded papers such as Canson Mi-Teintes, simply because those kinds of papers cannot hold many layers of pastel. Every layer will go towards filling the minimal tooth — plus Canson has so many different colors you can select a color to serve as your “underpainting”.
Price goes on to make the same point with regard to Art Spectrum’s Colourfix sanded paper — that brand, too, has many different shades available for purchase, and presumably, if you’re using a specific shade, you’ve selected that shade for the way it will work with what you will paint on it.
This is good to know, as right now, my main paper stash is made of Mi-Teintes, and Colourfix!
Reference: Maggie Price, Painting with Pastels: Easy Techniques to Master the Medium (Cincinnati, Ohio: North Light Books, 2007), p. 71.
Sometimes doing the NuPastel thing doesn’t make sense to me. I noticed on one of my follow-along courses that the suggested paper to use was dark blue Pastelmat, and the suggested underpainting was to be done in Blue Spruce NuPastel. But the instructions in the form of a PDF clearly showed a taupe-colored paper, because Blue Spruce doesn’t really show up on a dark blue paper!
In any case, I tested the NuPastel by using a light touch on two different papers: the dark blue Pastelmat (where it went on “like butter”) and gives more coverage, even without rubbing it in, and the twilight Canson Touch, where it was hard and scratchy, and seemingly added no value at all!
I later attempted to brush it out of both papers, and failed. All it did was smear and grind in. Ugh!
BetterLateThanNeverArt 