Very shortly into my wild creative adventures in furthering my artistic expertise sitting in the sun for a few days many times a year studying and perfecting a reproduction of a great master’s works, I got requests to put my chalk images on canvases and walls. Sealing chalk images for longevity is a complicated issue.

Historically artist pastels are done on rough gritty paper, and remain transient and fragile as they are only lightly protected by a spray varnish that barely sets the surface, and any spray can terribly disturb the works completion. Images in chalk are prone to destruction if bumped or jostled.

I invented a way to work the chalk into the raw canvas to help hold the image from being lost, and also perfectly sealed my chalked images on canvas, by chalking with particular water soluble archival pigments, and sealing them with water based UVLS varnish.

By drawing on the raw side of a pre-gessoed canvas (hand stretched backward on stretcher bars); and using a sealer that is painted on at a snails pace or slower… with a wide soft brush very lightly… letting the varnish soak into the lightest areas first, and careful to always load the brush enough to keep the capillary action from drawing pigments into the brush, and also wiping out any pigments before the next pass. I was able to preserve the images with very little alterations.

Once dry, I sand the hardened varnish between each of six laters. When it is done, it is completely archival and it reads like an oil painting with rich colors about six-shades darker than a unvarnished chalky pastel surface.