Fabric Collage painting with pastels and acrylics.

I have been experimenting with pastels lately and love mixing them with gesso and acrylic paint. There are so many beautiful colors in pastels that I can't always find with paints so mixing them with paint or gesso has been a great experiment for me. Golden makes a great product, Acrylic Ground for Pastels which creates a great, gritty surface to apply the pastels and when you apply it with a pallete knife it creates texture and depth in your paintings. I love this stuff!

I really like painting over the fabric. I found, though that I had to do quite a bit of sanding to distress and imbed the fabric deeper in the work. Finding an old eyelet blouse of mine, I promptly ripped up to use in this piece, which you can see on the figure.

I filmed this whole process and will be teaching a class. Details coming soon. Thanks for visiting!

Here is the start of this painting. I used matte medium to collage papers and fabrics (vintage hankies and linens).

I apply soft pastels in different areas of the painting to block in colors.

I paint with both acrylic titanium white and gesso and mix the pastels to create tones.

I then concentrate on the face using acrylics and alcohol inks.

I have some reference of birds on a branch to create the linear image next to the figure.

I collage over some areas to pull the piece together.

The final painting.

Here is a close up of the side...lots of texture to look at.

Here is a close up of the figure.