Discover how to do your own pastel bars paints
The pastel paints are bars mades of pigments colors with a little of binder that allows us to make the bar shape.
Recipe to make your own pastel bars Paints
Dissolve the gum by heating the following proportion:
- 5 grams of tragacanth gum
- 1 liter of distilled water
The pigment is mixed with the blend of water and tragacanth gum. You can also use a little ok skim milk, egg tempera, rabbit skin glue, and other simple binders.
To reduce moisture, we place the bars on blotting paper, and we knead it and let it dry with a rod shaped.
We can use all the best pigments as: Titanium Dioxide White or Zinc White, Red Ochre, Mars Reds, Burnt Sienna, Dark Yello Ochre, Mars Orange, Pthalo blue, Mars Violet, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber.
DARK AND LIGHT PASTEL TONES – MIXTURES OF PIGMENTS AND WHITE BASES
We can also do mixtures of pigments with white o noir bases. This serves to create color bars with others tones. The base color is the color (red, blue, yeloow…) that you are going to make more dark or more clear.
- 1 part of the base color + 3 parts of white or black
- 2 parts of the base color + 1 part of white or black = Pastel with the original color.
- 3 parts of the base color + 1 part of white or black
When the pastel painting artwork is finished, we don’t have to fix it with varnish or lacquer if we want to preserve the traces of pigment that give to the pastel painting a vivid color.
Before finishing the artwork, when you work, you can fix with a nonfat lacquer spray the painting. Normally we use a rubber lacquer diluted in alcohol.
