Cardinal by Meg Lyman

5×7″ Pastel

e-mail to buy

I spent a fairly long time working on this cardinal. It was my first time using pastels on Pastelbord, and I liked it. I overworked it a bit, but at least I’m starting to get the hang of pastels, and when to use the cheapies vs. the Senneliers. I was pretty happy with the piece.

Then I tried to be adventurous. I have fixative spray for Claybord. I know they make fixative specifically for pastels, but this fixative was specifically for Claybord. I thought, what the hell, might as well try it. …… BAD idea. I really hope I can help someone avoid learning this lesson the hard way. Oh well… I’d never learn anything if I didn’t take chances.

This is what it looked like before.

Snail

Pastel on La Carte, 2.75 x 5.5

$45 – e-mail to buy

My lovely set of Sennelier half-pastel-sticks came with a tiny piece of the brand’s pastel card, La Carte. You know why they put it in there. They’re enabling new pastel junkies, that’s what they’re doing. It should be outlawed.

I tried the stuff to see what it’d be like. It’s far superior to plain old pastel paper. Now that I know what I’m missing, I want to go buy the expensive stuff. I might even sell my hypothetical firstborn for a set with all the colors. However, I have umpteen million sheets of Canson paper to use. Good thing it takes gouache without too much protest. I think I’ll be trying a lot of mediums on it before I use it all up…