Friday, December 18, 2009

Pan Pastels


Oh, my...another addictive art supply. I've discovered Pan Pastels, a new type of pastel that is very fine, soft, and low-dust. (Thanks for the birthday money, Ilene! :) They come in individual pans and in sets too, and have little sponge applicators of all shapes and sizes with them. My discovery coincided with the desire to start "daily" art journaling again, just for myself at home. The pastels cover a page so smoothly and quickly, and with such rich color, that when presented with a gift certificate for Jerry's Artarama (thanks for the Chanukah gift, Ryan!) I ordered more colors. Hopefully I'll post something here soon that I've done, although my daily journaling tends to be kind of personal at times. Here's a photo from the Internet in the meantime.

4 comments:

Adrian said...

Hi Sherry! Yes, I was in Pam Carriker's class and have been playing around with portrait making, finally using color! I'm excited about the PanPastels because they so flawlessly blend! I was wondering about using it in a journal. Do the colors rub off your pages? Do you spray them with a fixative? Give me a hollar and let me know how you handle them. I'm new to all this art stuff and love to hear other's advice. And, thanks for stopping by my little blog.

bluegiraffe (Sherry) said...

Yay, finally a blog comment by someone who's not related to me! :) The colors do rub off somewhat onto facing pages, but stay pretty vivid on the actual page. I haven't used a real fixative yet (too smelly and maybe toxic, and it's only an informal journal) but did use hairspray (my art journaling teacher recommends that) and it helped a little, not a lot. I'm continuing to experiment with them. FYI- here's a link to a youtube video by Pam C. on painting a portrait with Pan Pastels, if you haven't seen it yet. I'm going to look at it again now that I have the actual pastels. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zx5CfNLpI8

Adrian said...

Thanks Sherry! I visited the PanPastel site and watched a few of their videos for more tips. One of the commenters said using a gloss fixative really brings out the colors. Guess I'll just have to pop outside to spray and avoid the toxins. Let me know more about your adventure. I think the big problem with this wonderful product is how to decide what colors to get first. There are so many. Sheesh!

bluegiraffe (Sherry) said...

Thanks for the tip, Adrian. Assuming it doesn't snow much more here in MD, I guess I could use the spray outside too. Yes, it is hard to decide which colors--too bad the 80-color set is so expensive!
I'll keep you posted...