I have a problem….an artistic problem. I need advice pretty soon. It’s like this.
Several years ago I did a group of five pictures dealing with the season of Advent. (This is the season of the church’s year that leads up to Christmas, in case you don’t know.) They were displayed at the appropriate time of the year, and were received quite well. I came across them looking through my racks recently and thought that it was possibly about time they were given another outing, and the suggestion was welcomed in the local Baptist church. Advent begins on the last Sunday of November, so I pulled them out this afternoon to take a look at them, and noticed a problem.
The series is executed in oil pastel on canvas. I know that the canvas can absorb the oil in the pastels and cause the image to fade. Checking back in my records that does appear to have happened, because the photographs look appreciably fresher. The usual way to prevent this is to make sure that the surface is well-primed before beginning to apply the pastel, and I believe that this is what I had done. It appears that I ought to have done the job more thoroughly. What to do?
It does look as if I might need to go over the entire surface again, in order to refresh the colour. This is going to be pretty laborious and time-consuming, but I can’t think of an alternative. I want to learn from the experience, however, and I would be very interested indeed to hear from any readers who have experience with oil pastels, especially if you have tried to use these over a support of canvas.
Thanks in anticipation.