Your Eyes to the World of Soft Pastel Art
Archive for May, 2010
FineArtViews April 2010 Pastel Winners
May 28th
Daggi Wallace
The FineArtViews Painting Competition has announced the winners for April 2010. The Outstanding Pastel painting went to Daggi Wallace and James Otto.
The finalist who went into FAV15% with their pastel paintings are:
Tucson Pastel Society
May 27th
Becky Neideffer
The Tucson Pastel Society is a new society run by Becky Neideffer, who’s work you could have seen at the last Pastel 100. Becky and other Arizona pastel lovers started the society in January 2010 and they look like a very lively group of artists. They have monthly meetings, monthly newsletter and they have joined the IAPS. This month they got visit and presentation from Brian Freeman, and last month from Phil Starke. Preparation for the first members’ exhibition is ongoing and we hope they will share it with us once it happens.
Sandy Byers Pastel Demo
May 25th
Sandy Byers, PSA, is a pastel artist from USA Pacific Northwest. Sandy paint all sorts of subjects but her cats are my favorite.
You can find a several videos about Sandy’s work on her youtube channel. There are also several demo video clips and I like the most the following one:
Old Pastel Master: James Whistler
May 23rd
James Whistler Pastel works
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)
Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. At age 21 he sailed to Europe after committing himself to become an artist. Among the others he met Edgar Degas in Paris whose friendship was very important to him as an artist. He emerged as an advocate of Aestheticism, movement that promoted the unity of art and design with credo “art for art’s sake”. Striving to make harmony between shape, color, light and line and finding a parallel between painting and music, Whistler titled many of his paintings “Symphony”, “Harmony”, and “Nocturne”. Emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony he became one of the founder of Tonalism. Famous signature for his paintings was a stylized butterfly. The symbol was appropriate, for it combined both aspects of his personality—his art was characterized by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative.
Whistler preferred to work outdoors but the unusually cold winter of 1880 made holding an etching needle or painting en plein aire with oils or watercolors impractical. Pastels, however, were an ideal medium. Whistler completed 90 pastels while in Venice, describing them in a letter to his dealer as being “totally new and of a brilliancy very different from the customary watercolor.”
In comparison to older and contemporary pastels, Whistler’s Venetian pastels were strikingly sketchy, with large areas of paper left blank. Criticized by a conservative contemporary critic as “vaguely incoherent,” the pastels are appealing to the modern eye. Whistler used color to indicate the magical effects of light on a Venice encased in winter.
His most famous painting the iconic Whistler’s Mother, oil on canvas, made in 1871 is displayed in a frame of Whistler’s own design, and is now owned by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Upon this painting post stamp was made in memory and in honor of Mothers of America.
Sources:
Wikipedia; Wetcanvas, The Pastel Journal; Traditional Fine Arts Organization; Olgas’ Gallery
Museums:
Taft Museum of Art, America; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Tate Gallery London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Freer Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Terra Museum of American Art (United States)
Newsletter: the Pastel Scribbler, May 2010
May 20th
The Pastel Guild of Europe published the May issue of the Pastel Scribbler. This is a free newsletter dedicated to a soft pastel art and is gathering European pastel artists. You can find old issues here and if you like it you can subscribe at the bottom of the PGE home page.
- Announcing a new competition for Apprentice Members.
- Get Dusty Winner: Susan Cottrell from Wales, UK.
- The Sealed Package Framing by Marie-France Oosterhof.
- Traveling Europe and Painting with Pastels by Steven Hill, USA.
The Pastel 100 – Still Life and Floral
May 19th
Top pastel artists in the category Still Life and Floral at The Pastel Journal 11th annual Pastel 100 Competition. Check the left column and the Gallery page for the artworks that I got permission from the artists to be published.
PJ Grand Prize Sarah Blumenschein
1. Gertrude Abramson
2. Kathy Steckel
3. Anne McGrory
4. Brian Freeman
5. Peter Seltzer
Honorable mention: Ralph (Alex) Mirrington, Sangita Phadke, Rebecca Margolese-Malin, Bob Franklin, Karen Howard, Barbara S. Groff, Jeanne Crain Leemon, Ruth C. White, Sheila M. Evans, Becky Neideffer, Tim Reilly, Jim Gunter, Maceo W. Michell, Dianna Ponting.
See the gallery with all Pastel 100 winners on this site.
My pastel version of Cezanne
May 18th
I made a pastel version of Paul Cezanne’s Still Life with Cherub after the realization that Cezanne didn’t really like the pastels. Or rather I love to believe he didn’t come across good set of pastels 
.
Even the Cezanne’s painting that was explored in my older post ended up as being done in oil. Seeing so many of his work on the net I just couldn’t resist to try to reproduce one of his works. This is on Pastelmat, mainly with Unison and Rembrandt pastels, the size is 30×40 cm (12×18″). The photo of the original is from Wikipedia.
Tips for the Soft Pastel Artists
May 17th
Casey Klahn
Liz Haywood-Sullivan is talking how to clean the anti-reflective or museum glass – by using mix of plain water and alcohol. Blog.
Casey Klahn is giving us several methods how to reclaim Sennelier La Carte pastel paper. One of the ideas is to use Turpenoid – It’s not that I don’t trust Casey but I will first have to try this one out. The painting in this post shows Casey’s work in Pastel & Charcoal on re-claimed La Carte Paper.
An interview with popular instructor Richard McKinley will appear in the July/August 2010 issue of The Artist’s Magazine. The portions of the interview that didn’t fit in the print version of the magazine are posted on the magazine’s blog.
On the blog Artist in Pastel, there is an example of how to use Photoshop as a tool for analyzing a complex photo, and simplifying the painting process.
Pastel Journal Annual CDs on sale
May 16th
The North Light is having the Pastel Journal and other art magazines Annual CDs on sale. The 2009, 2008 and 2007 are 18$ and 2006 and 2005 are for 10$. I prefer the paper version but the CD version is very useful when I do some research.
Northwest Pastel Society Members’ Exhibition 2010
May 15th
Bill McEnroe
The Northwest Pastel Society is presenting Members’ Exhibition for 2010 on their website. The works will also hang in the Blue Horse Gallery, Bellingham, WA till May 26th. Members were asked to think “OUTSIDE THE BOX”, or take an experimental approached toward the work to be presented in this years’ show.
The Best of Show was pastel “B.C. Chess” by Bill McEnroe.
NPS Presidents’ Award: “Blue”, Denise Champion.
NPS Director’s Award: “Chit Chat”, Marcel Schwarb.
Miniature Category Award Winners:
1st Place Award: “A Lady From Wales” Paulette Johnson.
2nd Place Award: “Sun Kissed” Kari Tirrell.
3rd Place Award: “Colorful Canoes” Paulette Johnson.
The extensive list of awards is available as a pdf file, and on the Bleu Horse Gallery site A-K and L-Z.
And also don’t forget about the NPS open international exhibition.
Barbara Benedetti Newton
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