Bob Palmerton 

Framing a pastel directly against the glass is called passe-partout framing. I thought to myself, really? Pastels are traditionally framed with a spacer between the art work and the mat or glass, to enable any particles of pastel to fall and not "dusty-up" the inside glass. With the sanded papers on the market today, however, stray pastel particles occur less frequently in framed pastel paintings. But I wanted to give this a try, so I chose a small pastel painting and a s

I recently visited Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. The day was overcast with a misty atmosphere exacerbated by the violent Atlantic. Great photo opportunity! Below is the reference photo for a newly-started pastel painting: I pulled out a 12x18 sheet of Wallis paper with a dark brown-grey tone. The challenge is to capture the blinding whites of the ocean surf and the light white-grey-green of the Atlantic, despite the dark tone of the paper. So I pulled out my