Pastel chalk. What's the best surface?

That's my experience so far. They don't stick really well to gloss surfaces. Flat surfaces will retain them much better.

Murray

Dave,

You're spot-on as far as a flat coat goes before applying pastels. However, if you're going to top-coat the pastels with more flat, you will see a very dramatic change in the appearance of you pastel work. You will notice that the pastel effect is seriously reduced and end up having to reapply the pastels several times to get a similar effect to the original pastels alone.

"How do you keep the pastels from rubbing off," you ask? Well, you don't. The final pastel application will rub off, but that's also an incentive to admire the model without handling it. A periodic touch up with some additional pastels is better (IMHO) than hiding all of your pastel work behind a coat of clear laquer.

Good luck on your build,
Foster

You hit the nail on the head. The small surface irregularities of a flat finish will privide the pastel dust a place to settle, and thus adhere to the model.

Agree 100 % with Foster .... no after-coat on any of my finishes.

What about an acylic flat seal. Or future diluted to be flat. Will pastels stick to that good, or does it have to be laquor?

PS: Hey Shermanfreak, have you seen my sig lately?

I used to loose my pastel effects upon spraying another coat too, but lately I've just misted an "almost" coat, not spraying directly, but creating a mist in the vacinity. It works fairly well. I used the method on this plastercast house and it worked nicely:

Thanks everyone for the replies. It's great posting a question on this forum, and you get more and better answers than for what you originally asked.

Thanks,

Dave