Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Pastels - a lightfastness problem with a twist

My friend Gayle Mason had an interesting story to tell me this week - well interesting to pastel artists!

She started a new work on (abrasive) sienna pastel card before going on holiday for two weeks and left the card on her drawing board - which sits next to a window in very good light. Gayle had done the initial drawing of the subject matter and then covered this with a sheet of cartridge paper. Imagine her annoyance when she got back and found the pastel card had faded. Now everybody who immediately thought the card had faded due to being next to the window - 'wrong! Read on.........

The part of the card which was fully exposed to light for two weeks was absolutely fine. However, the part of the card which had been under the cartridge paper had faded. If you go to her blog post about this you can see for yourself as Gayle has posted some photos.

After discussion, our current theory is that, since the cartridge paper is not acid free, it might have had an impact on the pastel card.

Does anybody know why this happened? Do any of you have any other theories about this very odd case of fading?

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1 comment:

  1. That is interesting. I think your the cartridge paper is the culprit.

    ReplyDelete

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