Colored Pastel Paper

This morning I woke up early, before dawn, and got myself together for the day. As soon as it was light enough I went out in the yard to the goldfish pond and sat with my pastel pencils and some dusty red canson paper taped to a slick masonite board. I watched for a bit as the fish played around catching the early morning bugs. I guess everyone was waking up and wanting breakfast. The birds were singing and the frogs had gone silent I suppose in fear I would see them.

The fish in the pond are just ordinary goldfish, but one has a fancy tail and I guess that makes him special. I call him Jack. As I sat thinking and drawing I thought about the paintings I had looked at the night before of wonderful koi swimming in a pool. Jack had all the moves of a koi, but just wasn't a big and he was just orange all over, not spotted like some koi are, but like I said he had the spirit of koi. So, I pretended he was a koi just like pretend when I was a little girl and wanted to be a princess. Before my hour was up I had finished my work and felt really good about the painting, so I hurred to get it under glass and framed.

The Canson paper I used was a dusty red color so I just blocked in Jack letting the paper show thru. Working on a red background and letting the background pop thru everyonce in a while is a good thing to bring harmony to a painting. Keeping your colors limited is another way to bring harmony. I put down a dark blue layer around Jack and then proceeded to layer in yellows and some greens over the dark blue which produced different shades of green all the way across. To finish the painting up, I used a cerulean blue pastel which worked well with the red paper.

Normally you frame pastels using a mat and spacers to keep the paper from touching the glass, but you can frame pastels next to the glass if you are sure you have the paper secure so it will not rub or shuffle at any time. I took care to tape the Canson paper with archival tape to an archival backing board and then framed next to the glass. Yes, you lose some of the sparkle, but in this case, framing next to the glass actually helped the illusion of Jack in the water.

Jack the Koi
En plein air 08-31-07
8x10 framed without mat
Soft Pastel on Canson
Framed & ready to hang
$100.00
Contact phyllisfranklin@hotmail for availability