Question: When you're finished with a pastel, how do you keep it protected until you frame it? How do you transport it from the site where you're working and how do you store it?

Answer: Due to the fragile nature of pastel, extra caution needs to be employed when storing and transporting our paintings—either home from a day painting or to the framer. My method is to attach my pastel surface to a drawing board support that's larger than the painting and cover it with glassine paper for protection (see photo at above). Glassine is the barrier of choice due to its anti-static nature. When removed, minimal amounts of pastel are affected, leaving no noticeable alteration of the painting. If glassine is hard to obtain, tracing paper can be substituted (most retail art supply stores carry tablets of various sizes). Some artists, when traveling, transport their paintings between the pages of tracing paper within the tablet. Avoid plastic as a protective layer; it has a high static charge and tends to pull considerable pastel off the surface (the same reason many avoid using plexiglas when framing). In the studio, I stack my drawing boards with paintings in varying degrees of completion vertically against a wall, providing easy access.

When working on location, two systems have served me well. One is to use a wet panel box built for transporting oil paintings (see photo at left). These hold the drawing boards that the paper is adhered to, allowing for  travel with multiple supports—ready to employ in an instant. My cases and drawing boards are 16x20 and 18x24. They hold 6 panels each and are stored in the rear of my vehicle, providing easy access. If you work on rigid panels like Ampersand Pastelbord or Richeson's new pastel panels, you can acquire a case specific to the size of the panel: 8x10, 9x12, 11x14, and 12x16 are popular dimensions.

Since this is too much to transport on a flight, I have limited myself to three Gatorboard drawing boards (light-weight and strong) with individual sheets of paper and glassine. These are placed between the Gatorboard and secured together with large clips available from an office supply store. I place a note on the boards to alert the TSA inspector of their fragile nature, explaining that the boards are “artwork” and “pastel-chalk” in both English and the language of the destination country. To protect the contents of the suitcase, these are placed in a clear plastic bag and sandwiched in the middle of the baggage. The next day's painting adventure is readied by adhering the pastel paper to the drawing board with drafting tape, which is easily removed, yet holds well.

Back in the studio, paintings requiring long-term storage without the protection of framing are placed in large flat files with glassine protecting the pastel surface. Or, they are sandwiched together and placed in archival photo boxes (available at professional photo supply stores). Once a year I reassess these stored paintings, destroying some and reworking others. Having a secure system for preserving the paintings allows for them to be as fresh as the day they were set aside, even if I am not!

At top: Pastel painting protected by glassine.

Above: Case for transporting pastels done on location.

As February begins in Oregon we find ourselves experiencing yet another storm. The words "cold," "damp" and "gray" are often associated with the Pacific Northwest. Luckily, here in the southern portion of the state, we have had snow, creating quite a bit of excitement for the landscape artists. Since it melts rather quickly, and pastel is vulnerable to dampness (its binder being water-soluble), I choose to work quickly in oil or sketch on location, bringing these studies back to the studio as reference for pastel paintings.

Photographing these fleeting scenes is also useful, preserving many locations and lighting conditions, while allowing for minimal exposure to the elements. What the camera produces should always be suspect, however, to the trained eye of the painter. Often the value range in the photograph is lacking, either exposed for the shadows or the lights, and thus leaving the opposite void of detail. Color is only as true as the film and processing, or the technical ability of the digital photographer (I will explore taking better reference photos in a future blog).

One tip when photographing snow in brightly lit situations is to over-expose by at least one stop. The light meter built into the camera doesn’t understand the scene is made up of a majority of white, highly reflective surfaces, so it under-exposes the scene, producing an overly dark photograph. Even with digital it's advisable to compensate by exposing one under-stop. Example: Camera meter reads shutter speed 250, aperture f11—set the shutter speed to 125, or the aperture to f8.
  
Since snow is so reflective it's more prone to reflecting color. Our mind associates white to snow and often overlooks the subtle color tendencies. As an artist friend said: “ Our minds have a built in white balance feature” (referencing the setting in digital photography that adjusts the camera for a neutral color balance). In general, the light sunlit areas will be warmer (towards yellow, orange and red) and the shadows will be cooler (towards blue-green, blue and blue-violet). Since most snow paintings will have a dominance of cool tones, it's advisable to work on a warmer, toned paper or an underpainting with warmer tones to establish a harmonic bias towards warm (this is true for most landscape painting). As pastel is applied on top of this warm underpainting, it will appear cool to our eye and we will naturally adjust our pastel choices to better relate to the undertone, producing a warmer harmony that feels more natural (to read more about this, see my blog entry on simultaneous contrast). Even when the finished painting is dominated by the cooler side of the color wheel, a warm underpainting serves us well. My underpainting, shown above, for my finished winter landscape in pastel (at top) was done in watercolor on mounted Wallis paper.
 
I know some of you living in more extreme winter areas have found ways of working on location in frigid conditions. I applaud you. For me, a nice visit to the location for inspiration, followed by an afternoon in the studio with a hot cup of coffee and Vivaldi on the stereo, makes for a perfect winter pastel experience. By the way, I can’t wait for spring!

Sapphire Afternoon (above; pastel, 18x12) by Richard McKinley

Richard McKinley is a regular columnist for The Pastel Journal. See his column in the current issue of the magazine.