pastels...

's a good 'un, Lori - is it really a first?

Beautiful Lori....great colours. I had a go with pastels a few years ago and someone told me to spray it with hairspray when finished to seal it.

thats excellent

Yes excellent !

Thanks!! it's the first one with chalk pastels (soft pastels) I like the quality of colour much better than the oil pastels which I tried first.. These are my favourite apples...Royal Gala....yummy. I've heard that hairspray is a good fixative but found that most fixatives alter the colours subtly...it's a trade off...durability for clean colours and vice versa.

Great first attempt Lori - those apples look good enough to eat! I didn't get on very well with oil pastels either.

I've picked up a good tip re fixative - you can buy 'proper' stuff from an art shop, which will be expensive. But if you buy hairspray to fix it, buy the very cheapest bog-standard one you can find as that will not have any 'additions' e.g. perfume and any funny stuff that's meant make your hair look shiny or whatever. It shouldn't alter the colour....although it might make the colours appear deeper - like wetting a pebble my teacher says.

Another good tip - to get really intense areas of colour and also where you don't want the colour to appear textured, apply one layer of colour and rub it in with your finger, fix it, they apply another layer and rub it in and fix it again. Keep doing that until you've got the desired intensity.

(I'm doing a course - that's how I know this stuff!)

Lucky You.... I just go to the library and bring home a tome or two!! Thanks for the tips...will give it a try!

Looking good enough to eat Lori...lol. I used to draw with charcoal out of the fireplace, back when I used to live at home with my parents thirty years ago. I also used Janey's technique of spaying my sketches with hairspray, before I stored them away. Wow, that was that eons ago...lol.

LOL...you'll adore Adorn! remember that one? I used the pump spray rather than the aerosol...but that was eons ago...gave up hairspray just about the time I gave up makeup....lol. now I paint just about everything else though...just refinished a pair of tables and a cute little round table...my son's have apartments to furnish so I think they may be the recipients of my painting obsession...lol. also paint murals...just need the time to do it!

Good work Lori, YOU CERTAINLY HAVE THE KNACK

Can we have pics of the finished tables please Lori.....would love to see them!......When stencilling was all the fashion I loved it and stencilled lots of old whicker chairs and stuff like that...I think it's becoming fashionable again here on furniture and it's so easy to make your own stencils to match furnishings etc.

just posted a blog about my extra-curriculars, Janey. hope you like it.
Thank you Funkyfuchsia!