Fixatives July 17, 2024 12:33 2 Comments

I ran into a problem with this painting--and all the paintings I've been making with watercolor and colored pencil. It's a technical issue that has to do with the finish. I had bought a fixative a while ago that can be used with colored pencil or pastels--Lascaux. (Well gee, the manufacturer's site says it's not smudge-proof. Nice not to put that out there in general) Expensive, but it had really good reviews. So what the heck, I decided to try it on a small painting the other day.

I found out it doesn't work. No amount of spraying will keep the stuff from smudging. I was hesitant about it anyhow, because it smells like death and has a cancer warning on it, just like almost all the spray fixatives or varnishes do. I try to be low toxicity with my art, plus it's a real disadvantage to have to use it outside in winter or when it's windy or too hot; you cannot use it inside due to the poisonous fumes.

After poking around for hours, I came across some casein spray fixative (Spectrafix) that had good reviews for fixing colored pencils and pastels. I had tried this same stuff years ago when it first came out; it didn't work on watercolor for me. But it has so many good reviews now that I thought they must have changed the formula. And it's non-toxic. You can use it inside no problem. So I got the version that specifically mentions watercolor as well as colored pencils and tried it yesterday.

It did not work very well to fix the colored pencil parts. But worse, since it contains water, it affected the watercolor parts of the painting. blurring everything and causing the pigment to sink further into the paper.

I have really liked adding colored pencil to my paintings. They help me give much more detail, and since they are oil-based, I can do glazing with them, layering colors. But if I can't get a fixative to work, everything I paint will have to be framed behind glass--which means a problem if I ever want to get my work into a gallery, it's an extra expense for the buyer, many people do not like art behind glass, and it increases the shipping weight. Yes, there various non-reflective acrylics and glass for framing now, but they don't even make them in the size I want to eventually get up to, 22 x 30".

For stuff that's just watercolor, I can seal them with Dorland's cold wax, which is very low toxicity and looks great and you can do it inside. Makes a beautiful soft sheen. But it smears colored pencils.

So now I'm wondering if I just need to give up using the colored pencils and try to get similar effects with watercolors. Problem is that my essential tremors make it difficult for me to have sufficient control over a painted line. It's much easier with the kind of drag a pencil has.

Plus I really like the granular quality of colored pencils. It's the main reason I thought of using them in the first place. I'm using granulating watercolor pigments with granulating medium to get a more textural look. The colored pencils work great with it.

It's true thatI have been thinking that my paintings don't have much of a painterly quality anymore on account of the pencils. And that bothers me.  I am using the watercolor basically as a background, although its different values really help me come up with the images I place on it. But you can see that on this painting, a couple of areas I tried using watercolor to add images, like the factory area in the upper right hand corner. I forgot that white, which I have been using a lot in colored pencil, turns watercolor paint heavy and chalky. Sheesh.

So I just don't know what to do now.