Leonard Jagoda – Equine Artist
October 8, 2010
New Book: Art at the Speed of Life
January 18, 2011
Leonard Jagoda – Equine Artist
October 8, 2010
New Book: Art at the Speed of Life
January 18, 2011

FOCUS ON SURFACES: Pastelmat

We are often asked by artists using PanPastel for the first time, what papers they should use. This is a difficult question for us to answer as PanPastel works on almost any surface, from low tooth surfaces such as vellum and ink-jet / digital (matt) papers to the very toothy pastel surfaces. So it really depends on the artist’s preference, and the results they are trying to achieve.

On our website we feature a page called “Substrates” that shows a PanPastel mark on a variety of different surfaces – those are just a few of the potential surfaces that can be used; also our gallery shows various surfaces that artists are using in combination with PanPastel Colors.

One of the pastel surfaces that we really like is Pastelmat from  Clairefontaine in France. What do we like about it? Well, it is a premium card surface (360gsm/170lb) that has a unique coating of cellulose fibers, giving it excellent “grab” so it can hold many layers of PanPastel and pastel stick color, however at the same time its surface feels deceptively velvety and therefore it’s not abrasive. The best of both worlds for pastelists! Not only is Pastelmat popular for all types of dry media (pastel, colored pencil etc) you can also use it with wet media such as gouache, acrylics, watercolors etc.

The following video is a landscape painting demonstration by Deborah Secor. In this video Deborah takes you through the process of painting a full landscape from start to finish using only PanPastel colors & Pastelmat.

Here is a list of the colors used in this demo: Materials used

On Deborah’s Gouache painting blog she has also posted a step-by-step gouache painting demo on Pastelmat: gouache.blogspot.com

Deborah Secor writes regularly for The Pastel Journal, and her work has been featured in several books including “Pure Color: The Best of Pastel” and “Painting With Pastels” by Maggie Price.

UPDATE NOV. 6th, 2010:

The winner of the Pastelmat giveaway is Carol Davis.

Giveaway: This week one lucky winner is going to receive a free Pastelmat pad, along with a choice of any 5 PanPastel Colors! All you have to do is answer the question “how many colors are available in the Pastelmat range” (the answer can be found at Pastelmat.com) and complete the following form by midnight (EST) on Monday Oct. 25th. 

General Competition Rules