Hi friends! This Pebeo Pastel Fixative review is part commission horror story and part review. It might trigger you if you had a commission gone wrong, so be warned! I will put a warning before the disaster part.
Pebeo Pastel, Pencil and Charcoal Fixative
This product comes in two sizes: 200ml and 400ml. The 200ml retails for CAD$13.49 at DeSerres, and I bought the larger size because it worked out to be cheaper. In hind sight, I wish I bought the smaller one (or not at all).
The product claims to be a non-yellowing fixative for charcoal, pastels and pencil work by fixing the powdery pigment onto the paper without modifying its appearance. It is designed in France and made in Spain.
Pastels used:
Commission of Two Coton de Tulear Dogs
I have a Coton de Tulear myself, and understand the texture of the fur (which is more like hair) of the dog well. Since I wanted the slightly airbrushed look of soft pastels for the fur, I chose pastels. I sketched with a Prismacolor Premier white pencil on a Pastelmat.
I taped all around the picture so that I have something to grab onto without disrupting the pastels. First, I put in the eyes and nose with Stabilo pastel pencils.
After drawing the eyes, nose and mouth, I laid down the base layer of the fur. I usually fine tune the details as I go, but I would finish the one on the left before moving onto the right so my hand doesn’t smear the pastels.
After finishing the bulk of the left side, I moved onto the right.
Just like the left side, I put down the base layers on the right and finessed the details gradually.
Lastly, I used the white shade from Sennelier to add fur texture in as a finishing touch. This was now ready for the fixative.
Warning: this story took a turn after this, so read no further if you want the happy ending!
The Spray of Doom!
This isn’t the first time I used Pebeo, so if you wonder why I would risk it by spraying a fixative I haven’t used before, this isn’t the case. In fact, I had another disaster from a while back when I painted Pedro Pascal. If you want to read it, here is the other horror story. In that case, the Pebeo fixative worked, but it was with PanPastel and Conte a Paris.
After I finished the commission, I sprayed this Pebeo Pastel Fixative, which worked fine with PanPastel before.
I misted one light coat of Pebeo Pastel Fixative on my portrait and it washed away a lot of the pastels. Oddly enough, the Sennelier pastels were the only ones remaining after the spray. The Stabilo and Mungyo–significantly cheaper pastels–have completely disappeared.
Sadly, despite my best effort to paint on top of the dried coat of fixative, the pastels were simply not getting in the paper anymore. I had to make the hard decision to give up.
Pebeo Pastel Fixative: A Hard Review To Write
My devastation aside, I find it difficult to give this fixative a review. This claims to fix powdery pigment onto the paper, and it did some. It seems to only work with certain pastels but not others. It may be the type of binders in more expensive pastels like Sennelier and Conte a Paris that work better with the fixature. So if you are contemplating buying this fixative, be warned! It may not work with the pastels you have.
Epilogue
Since I have no other pastel fixative on hand, I didn’t want to risk ruining another pastel portrait. Instead, I used watercolour and gouache and painted the same two dogs. I am not spraying this one!
