by Jane Sutherland

Repairing a Damaged Canvas

A painting I was working on fell from my easel and landed on top of a stool. This accident left a big bulge in the canvas where it hit the edge of the stool, a dent on the bottom edge of the stretcher bar, and a quarter-inch tear in the canvas. Can I repair these damages?

Your canvas can be repaired. The first area to treat is the bulge. Lightly mist this area from the back of the canvas using a mixture of water and alcohol (isopropyl, or rubbing, alcohol is fine). The alcohol will make the moisture evaporate more quickly. Wait overnight to let the canvas thoroughly dry. This should allow it to shrink to its original size. Linen canvas has a better memory than cotton canvas, but the result should be very good either way. Repairing the bottom area, however, is a bit more difficult. The ideal solution is to remove the staples from the stretcher bar and fill in the dent with wood glue or putty, sanding smooth when dry. Apply gesso to the back of the canvas to repair the tear. Once dry you can retack the canvas to the stretcher bar and paint over the repair. However, considering that the canvas has been out of shape, it is probably not advisable to remove it from the stretcher bar at this point. You can finish the painting and repair the bottom edge later, allowing the canvas plenty of time to return to its correct shape. For a quick permanent fix, you can apply gesso with a cotton swab directly over the tear in the canvas, patching it together while filling the gap in the wood by building up layers of gesso and allowing each application to dry. If the original sizing on the canvas was hide glue rather than acrylic gesso, the quick fix should be executed with hide glue. You may also be able to slip a spatula between the back of the canvas and the stretcher bar to apply some glue size (or gesso) to strengthen the repair.

Making New Pastels From Old Ones

I have heard that it is possible to make new pastels out of broken pieces of used sticks. Is this true?

It’s true that you can put all the broken pieces of a single pastel color, including the pastel dust, on a piece of wax paper, add a couple of drops of alcohol, and roll out a new stick. After a few days of hardening you will have a new, smaller stick and be able to continue using the color.

Tips for Beginner Pastelists

I have just started using pastels. Can you recommend the best type? Is there any way to erase mistakes, and what is the best way to blend?  How do you get your whites bright? Do you recommend using fixative?

Dry pastels are available in soft, medium, and hard varieties. Round pastels are soft, and square pastels are hard—I recommend using something in between. A high-quality pastel is composed mostly of pigment with little filler, so the heavier the pastel, the finer its quality. Start by purchasing about 12 colors, including an extra dark, a midtone, and an extra light of the same color. Skip the beginner sets with preselected colors because they usually don’t have enough very dark and very light values. You can erase pastels with a Pink Pearl eraser and blend them with your finger, a blending stick, or a chamois cloth. As with most drawing media, a lot of heavy blending or a lot of erasing is inadvisable. Especially with pastel, the marks of the chalk add vitality to the artwork and visible layers of color add richness. Apply the chalk with light, short marks. Tinted paper is popular with pastel artists because it makes the whites appear whiter. Although it isn’t permanent, a light spraying of fixative will help hold the fragile pastel dust in place. Spraying too heavily will dull and darken colors and is particularly harmful to the whites. It is important to observe all health and safety rules while working with pastels in the studio. 

Defining a Pastel Work

When is a pastel a drawing and when is it a painting?

The short answer is that when paper is left showing, a pastel work is considered a drawing and when the entire surface is covered, it is a painting. Because there is plenty of room for debate here, a bit of history might be helpful. Traditional pastels were drawn on papers, typically tinted, and a lot of the area of the paper was left untouched. These drawings often served as preliminary studies for works that would later be painted in oils. But two developments took place that affected how pastel would be viewed and used as a medium in modern times: By the late 19th century drawing began to be seen as a finished art form in itself rather than as an adjunct to more permanent art forms, and in the 20th century, heavier, more durable supports for pastels became available, which made it possible to build up many layers of pastel as in a finished painting. Ultimately, however, the final word comes from the artist and depends on his or her process.

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Comments

Hi, Thank you very much on the intructions for fixing a torn Oil painting, and the other useful info on Pastels. I'm looking forward to inrolling in a Pastel Class in my area, but can't seem to find one at the moment. I have been a subscriber of American Artists and Artists Magazine for many years and throughly enjoy it and find it most helpful. Thanks again, Harriet Chilstrom