In the art world, the support is what you are putting your picture on to. If you paint, it’s your canvas (or board, or whatever else you decide to paint on).  For drawing, it is typically paper, but it doesn’t have to be. For pastels, there is a whole variety of “supports”, each one having a unique effect on the medium (i.e. how the pastels look).

The most basic support would be paper. Generally for pastel, if you use paper, you don’t want the paper to be too smooth. Some roughness, or tooth, is needed to give the pastel something to adhere to. A hot-pressed illustration board may be wonderful for photo-realistic drawings, but your pastels won’t stay on it. Those are best left to graphite or ink. A popular favorite seems to be Canson Mi-Tientes. It is inexpensive and comes in quite a variety of colors.  It has a ’smoother’ and ’rougher’ side on each sheet, but even the ’smoother’ side isn’t hot-pressed smooth. Some other options might be printmaking papers such as Stonehenge, though it is quite smooth for pastel (it makes a wonderful colored pencil paper though). On option if you really want to use a smoother  type of paper is to spray it with spray fixative. Just know that if you do that, it will effect your colors, usually darkening them. There is also a chance it will produce spots. This can be avoided by being sure to not spray too close (minimum of 12 inches) and don’t spray down. Make your paper stand up vertically, either on a easel or a wall and spray sideways, never down. Also be sure to do it somewhere well ventilated as there are toxic fumes in fixative. I don’t care for fixative and prefer instead to use a sanded or ‘grit’ paper/board. That way my pigments stay fresh and don’t sink down into lower layers because they got ‘wet’ from spraying.

Sennelier makes a wonderful, unique pastel board called “LaCarte”. It has a rough texture almost like a sanded paper, but it isn’t nearly as aggressive (meaning it won’t east up your pastels the way a true sanded paper can). It is made with dried vegetable flakes glued on to an illustration board, so it won’t bend easily. The downside to LaCarte is that it CANNOT get wet. If it does, those little vegetable flakes come right off. Even if you accidentally spit while blowing away dust (an unhealthy habit for a pastelist but I know one many of us have) that little drop of spit can be enough to lift the flakes. I had to repair a portrait with gouache in a small area where the coating came off. Once that coating came off, nothing would stick to it. Luckily it was a small spot and not noticeable (also this particular one was for my mother so she didn’t mind the repair).  Had it been for a client, I would have had to start all over and it was nearly done when it happened. So a word of caution, if you use LaCarte, DON’T GET IT WET!!! I still use and love this support, I am just much more careful with it now that I learned the hard way how delicate it really is.

Some more sturdy examples of a sanded paper are Wallis (Museum grade even tolerates solvents. Some people get the professional grade wet no problem, but from what I understand the company only specifies the Museum grade as being useable for mixed media.) To me, it is too aggressive. Hence why I still use the LaCarte sometimes, despite it’s being 'sensitive’. It’s horrifying, isn’t it? That a paper can be sensitive? It’s like having an emotional boyfriend/girlfriend.  You may love them, but you have to be careful not to upset them. Some other good alternatives are Colourfix, Sansfix, Pastelbord (a sanded coating on a clayboard panel), Hanemuhle Velour (which is just what is sound like…velour paper! A dream with colored pencils too, it gives them a really soft, rich look unachievable on conventional paper), and UArt. UArt is the successor to Ersta, a favorite among pastelists who have been around a little while, but UArt is archival, whereas Ersta was not acid free. The nice thing with UArt is that it comes in 4 grits so you can chose how rough you want it. (sounds kinky!)

Wow…paper can be moody, sensitive, kinky. Who knew?

Sadly, there’s a lot more I could say about paper, but I doubt anyone is as interested in paper as I am.  If you are, then ‘cheers!’ to a kindred geek!

‘Til next time!