art challenge

art challenge, Cezanne, pastel art

Creative Spark: Risk Takers

Mar 9th

Paul Murray "Memory"

The Creative Spark challenge that is published in the April 2010 issue of The Pastel Journal, by pastelist Paul Murray reveals that risk-taking factored significantly into his jurying of the Landscape & Interior category of the 11th Annual Pastel 100 Competition. Therefor the next Creative Spark challenge is to show a pastel painting in which you took a leap that paid off, and briefly describe how it worked.

Heather Gail Harman Won the “Get Dusty” contest

Mar 4th

Heather Gail Harman

Heather Gail Harman is a founder of The Portrait Society of Andalucia (Spain) and is a member of The Portrait Society of America. In the mid 70′s Heather began her long affiliation with the music and entertainments industries as a tour artist and worked for concert promoters. She had commissions of many famous names at that time including Elton John, Diana Ross, Boy George and – one of her favorite subjects – Barbra Streisand. Heather is an active member of the Pastel Guild of Europe and had won the latest Get Dusty challenge with this winter landscape.

Get Dusty

February 2010 Challenges for Soft Pastel artists

Feb 3rd

If you are in search for new subjects or simply lacking inspiration, you can check the following sites.
Virtual Paintout: San Francisco

Pastel Pointers Blog: Your special colors

I Draw and Paint: Ducks

Wet Canvas:

You can also take a look at the category art challenge on the right column.

Get Your Painting on a T-shirt and Win Some Cash

Jan 30th

If you have a painting or a part of your pointing that you know would be good for a T-shirt, you can enter this contest and check what others feel about it. The Design by Humans have contest daily (500$), weekly (750$), monthly (1000$) and special events. The cash prices are excellent and you can get some more exposure for your art. If your T-shirt is a good sell, you get extra money.

Pear and Pastel Connection

Jan 22nd

5 comments

Mario Vukelic

If you love pears, there is a great place for you – visit Pearathon website. They have collection of over 30 original paintings and the collection is growing. What is interesting to see is the amount of paintings done in pastel. There are over half of the works in soft pastels. This is unusual since the similar online galleries have majority of the works in oils and acrylics with a few pastels. Only conclusion that comes to my mind is that pastel artists love pears .

If you have your own painting of pears you can also submit your work, and if folks at Pearathon like it, it will end up in the gallery. Your pear painting needs to be original, and not a copy of some other work or photo, and it needs to be already somewhere on the web.

art challenge, pastel art, Soft Pastel Art, Soft Pastel Painting

The Virtual Paintout: Corsica

Jan 20th

Google maps

There are many virtual paintouts on the Internet and I found an interesting one using Google Street View. Last year Google has allowed using images from Google Street View as a reference for creating paintings and drawings, and the artists can sell these works.

Bill Gufey is running a blog where he picks a place in the world monthly and the artist must use a view found through Google Street View as the reference for the painting or drawing.

The participation is open to all levels of artistic ability.

art challenge

Creative Spark: Color and Design

Jan 8th

artist Maceo Mitchell

The Pastel Journal magazine is having a new challenge for the soft pastel artists. This time the task is to use fruits and vegetables to explore the subject of color and design. You have to submit a pastel painting where you can show an unconventional approach to your portrayal of these classic still life subjects. The deadline is February 12th. The challenge is presented through the art of pastelist Maceo Mitchell and his painting of 42 pears.

art challenge, Creative Spark, Pastel Journal, Soft Pastel Painting

Casey Klahn won “the Best art on an art blog in 2009″

Jan 2nd

Casey Klahn "Lazy River"

One of the top UK art and culture blogs – Making a Mark – run by Katherine Tyrrell has organized an online vote for best painting in 2009 on an art blog. Katherine has been doing this end of year review every December since 2006. If you want to participate in the future, someone needs to nominate your art blog and a painting.
For 2009 in category “Places” the winner was Casey Klahn with the soft pastel painting Lazy River.

Creative Spark – Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Nov 17th

Don Williams "Sixty-Six"

Creative Spark Challenge by the Pastel Journal magazine.
Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Show one or more pastel paintings that celebrate the beauty in seemingly commonplace subjects. E-mail your image(s) as JPGs with a resolution of 72 dpi to pjedit@fwmedia.com by December 22, 2009. Include the title, dimensions and a brief description. Please type “Creative Spark” in the subject line and include your name, e-mail and mailing address. The “editors’ choice” will be published in an upcoming issue of the magazine… The Pastel Journal