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Soft pastel artists and those using pastel pencils are familiar with the use of fixative spray to hold down the powdery surface and enable the picture to take more layers of colour.  Pastel fixative tends to darken the colours so care is needed to be modest with the amount of spray ( much like the lacquer hair spray - but designed for art use ) and go back into the painted surface to return the extreme lights and darks to maintain the contrasts of the picture.

 

Coloured Pencil artists in the USA will also be familiar with the use of sealing sprays to provide a new matt surface where pigment has reached the limit of saturation, and also to fix the final picture with a permanent ‘varnish’ which will also provide some extra UV light filtering and protect delicate colours in the picture.

 

Some of these fixative sprays are unique to the USA and postal and shipping restrictions stop any export of the highly inflammable spray canisters for retail customers in Europe.  Krylon manufacture a range of varnishes and fixatives and a look at the Krylon web site will provide more information for readers in the American sub continent.

 

For European readers ( and those elsewhere in the World where Krylon is not available ) there will be equivalents, but outside Europe we have no information on products.

 

In June of 2011, the Help and Advice Line on this site received an enquiry from a resident in France which read:

 

Having recently come to Coloured Pencils from Pastels, she asks about the use of re-workable fixative

( and brands available in Europe ), to enable the colour surface to continue to take colour when it becomes ‘polished’.  

Her initial question was

‘I have a question about workable fixatives for CP drawing. That is to say a fixative that can be used between layers as opposed to a final fixative. Could you tell me which brands of fixatives would be suitable?’

 

In a follow up question she asked for information on the use of fixatives ( and brands ) for preventing or curing wax bloom.  

There is an item on ‘bloom’ in Topics but it doesn’t feature sprays as I have no practical experience of the use of fixative with CP myself. I usually use an oil based pencil for choice and this prevents ‘bloom’ anyway.  Not all the USA based fixative sprays are available in Europe.

 

My initial research took me to Gildow and Newton’s  excellent Coloured Pencil Solution Book. Page 19 - Useful Tools -  which refers to Krylon Workable Fixative.  They say that the Fixative can be used to prevent Wax Bloom. They also say that fixative may alter the appearance of the colours in your work ( as it does when using fixative with Pastels ). If you use it be sure to test first on a sample test patch before using it on your work . The Solution Book goes on to say ‘Workable Fixative allows you to spray your work, fixing the colour at convenient intervals’.

 

As it seemed to be impossible to source Krylon workable fixative in the UK, I then went on the explore what other fixative sprays might be available and to see which of those might be suitable for Coloured Pencil work - to fix the surface during the painting process and enable extra layers of colour to be added when the surface becomes saturated with wax colour. And will take no more.

 

Winsor & Newton’s Artists non-removable Artists Fixative ( with UV filters ) as sold in the UK, is listed as ‘suitable for pencil’ and it is said by Winsor & Newton to be identical to the spray they sell in the USA labelled ‘Artists Workable Fixative’.

This spray is confirmed by a reader in Israel to work well in protecting finished work from strong sunlight, so we have a positive for the W & N product even though I have not found it to be the complete solution for interim fixes as the dry sprayed surface seems too smooth to take even coats of additional wax colour.

 

Other readers of this site have offered comments on the topic as follows:

 

‘I've used fixative regularly very successfully - but haven't tried the Winsor & Newton one with UV filter.

I think because pigment is held in wax or oil (rather than chalk as with pastel) there is less uptake of the fixative in the carrier so CP colours tend to "die" less than pastels anyway.

One thing that is essential if one is working in vignette is to clean the background paper before applying the fixative. A few minutes work with a putty rubber sorts this out.

 

‘I don't know about fixative.  But - with my pieces of CP on sanded gesso coated wooden panels, I've discovered that the spray coats of matt artists varnish that I use to finish them provides quite a bit of extra tooth and can certainly be overworked with a fairly soft pencil (I've been using Aquatone).  This is a useful discovery as I do sometimes reach a kind of saturation point with these panels where they won't take any more marks.  It was an accidental discovery but one which I may exploit a bit more in future!’

 

We had suggestions from CP artists who had used Lascaux brand fixative ( From Great art and other suppliers - but expensive), Someone who had used ‘Golden’ brand matte varnish ( also expensive ).  I tried the Daler Rowney ‘Perfix’ Pastel fixative and the Talens brand of Pastel Fixative - both on CP  and without much success.

 

The best option suggested to date has been the ‘own Brand fixative sold by Great Art under the Group ‘ Gerstaecker’ brand.

This is described as :

Alcohol based      Forms an invisible layer on your work - pastel, "pencil", charcoal, chalk, ink, or aquarelle.

Ideal for intermediary or finishing.       Very fine spray, matte/satin finish once dry.

Resistant after just a few minutes of drying time.      Does not yellow.

Great Art have since confirmed the product is suitable for CP and a test purchase was made to assess the way the spray works.

Our tester reported

I have received the Gerstaecker fixative and done a small test with CP as to its efficacy  as an intermediate workable fixatif. I must say that I am not disappointed. Having sprayed a very light coating on saturated CP layers, I was able to add a further 3 layers of CP. To be honest I did not expect to achieve more layers than this. It dries fast to a very slight sheen.

Although it may seem obvious to most of us, just a word of warning for those who wish to go down the route of workable fixative - remember that once used, it permanently fixes the colours already in place, thus they cannot be reworked. The Gerstaecker fixative is widely available and extremely reasonably priced. In the UK is is certainly available from Great Art, and from Great Art's equivalent in France "Géant des Beaux Arts" ..............and from Gerstaecker in Germany.

 

As at July 6th 2011, this is the position.We can confirm that there is a reasonably low priced alternative to the Krylon spray in the UK, though without having the Krylon to do a straight comparison, we don’t know which is the better option.

 

July 19th 2011.

Reply from Great Art in response to my original enquiry about their own brand fixative.  They apologise for delay in replying and confirm that their Group Head Office have responded as follows :

We tested our fixative and think it is not really good for wax pencil.

The customer would be better off  using the Sennelier fixative d´Artigny  (item 21281) or the Lascaux fixative.

This takes us back to one of our original replies which recommended the Lascaux fixative.

Further research will be done as the opportunity arises and hopefully we will be able to add more to this topic.

1st August 2011.

 

During the examination of fixatives, I was contacted and advised that someone had problems with using a final fixative on Derwent Pastel pencils worked on black paper.  It seemed that having used the Winsor & Newton spray, the pastel colour was reported as virtually disappeared.  This highlights the problems of using fixative spray on dark papers.

The pigment is bedded down into the paper with the liquid spray and is provided with a hard varnish coat.

The sparkle of the dry pastel pencil medium sitting on the surface of the paper is lost and the dark paper comes through, killing the effect of the pigment.

 

Any fixative sprayed on to dark paper should be sprayed only lightly and you should be prepared to add several additional layers of pigment to build back the picture layer and re-emphasize the areas of extreme light and dark.  I would suggest that if you are using pastel pencils on a dark paper, you should be prepared to  fix the surface regularly so that a good depth of pastel is established.

 

My own feeling is that it could well be best to avoid fixing wax type pencils unless you have a workable fixative you know will be safe to build more colour on top of.  

 

The only other benefit of fixatives is the fact that many of the more expensive brands also offer a built-in UV light filter in the spray, which can assist in stabilizing low lightfast colours.  I wouldn’t like to have to rely on spray fixative for UV protection, though, for lightfastness.  I would rather use the pigments known to be stable in the first place.

Last revised 1st August 2011

BASIC TECHNIQUES for Wax and Oil based Coloured Pencils (1) ;  APPLICATION OF COLOUR (2) ;  DENSITY OF COLOUR (3)

DIFFERENT MARKS on the paper (4) ;   WAX BLOOM (5) ;   FIXATIVES (6)

UPDATE ON FIXATIVES   2nd February 2012

I am about to test a sample of SpectraFix  casein based fixative for pencil and pastel

This comes in a non pressurised pump action bottle and is reported to have no smell and be totally ‘green’ with the added advantage that it has minimal effect to colour (hue) and value (light to dark).  It is said to have a matte finish.

It all sounds a bit like having the cake and eating it, but we will see.  The product is new to the UK but is reported on favourably by artists in the USA.  It will be interesting to see if the fixative provides a suitable surface over wax pencil for onward working.  Please get in touch if you can add your own experience to the report which I hope to add at the foot of this page within the next couple of weeks              02.02.2012   Peter Weatherill

A REPORT ON SpectraFix will be added here

For more information in the meantime see the SpectraFix website at    www.spectrafix.com

UK and European supplier is Jacksons Art Supplies