Ok, so I’m a wuss. It’s true. Despite my resolution to paint outdoors more, I have discovered that I simply HATE painting outdoors in winter. Instead, I’ve “cheated” by painting the view outside the window, or dashing ouside to take a photo and then painting from it. Oh well, maybe in the spring.
Here are some [...]
Author Archives: Ruth
Plein Air Project update
March 5, 2010 – 2:54 pm
Model Behaviour
December 1, 2009 – 6:02 pm
This past weekend I attended a figure drawing/painting workshop with one of the Pastel Artists Canada repeat award winners, Glenn Bernabe. Glenn, a resident of Markham, Ontario, usually depicts single female figures in urban settings (laundromats, coffee shops etc.) and his work has a polished, while rather melancholy atmosphere. Without doubt, his mastery of the [...]
Sally Strand workshop report
October 30, 2009 – 12:49 pm
My friend and fellow pastel artist Jessie Grant and I spent five days last week studying with Sally Strand. Sally has long been near the top of my list of “must-study-with” artists based on her magical way of portraying light (see her “men in white” and “player” series of paintings for examples), and when I [...]
Black Magic
September 28, 2009 – 11:54 am
Readers of this blog have seen how I typically begin a pastel painting by creating an underpainting of the large shapes and value structure of the composition, then overpainting with more detailed, textured strokes. Recently, however, I was re-reading a back issue of The Pastel Journal and came across an article by an artist who [...]
Les pastellistes!
September 25, 2009 – 8:32 am
I am delighted to say that I have had a painting accepted into the juried show of the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada, which will be exhibited at the Ogilvy Tudor Hall in Montreal from November 6th through 15th, 2009. If you are in the city then, do try and catch the show.
The piece accepted [...]
Uxbridge Studio Tour
September 25, 2009 – 8:27 am
Last weekend (Sept 19/20 2009) I participated in a wonderful regional studio tour in and around the town of Uxbridge, Ontario. Potter Cynthia Cupples (http://cynthiacupples.com/) generously invited me to share her home/studio space, so I happily set up a variety of paintings, my easel, and my pastels on Saturday morning.
The results exceeded my wildest expectations. [...]
Announcing a Plein Air Project: paintings for $100
September 9, 2009 – 11:45 am
My full time teaching career has made it (thus far) impossible to paint plein air (outside, in front of the subject) very much, so I’ve developed the skills to interpret photographs well, compensating for the distortions and limitations of the digital image. However, I do believe that painting directly from the subject has merits, and [...]
A Soft Touch
September 3, 2009 – 12:51 pm
Recently when I was buying supplies in my local art supply store (Bijan’s, in London, Ontario), the owner/artist persuaded me to try pastel painting on suede matboard–maybe because he had a big box of it on sale at the time? I’d had one or two experiences with it previously, but decided to give [...]
Pretty in Pink?
August 13, 2009 – 9:43 am
At the introduction to pastel workshop I taught at Meta4 Gallery in Port Perry last weekend, one of the students mentioned that a former instructor had told her she wasn’t “allowed” to use pink in her paintings! I’m sure this must have been said in jest, or perhaps it was a playful way to make [...]
PAC Juried Show Acceptance
July 27, 2009 – 11:39 am
I have just received word that two of my three entries into the Pastel Artists Canada juried annual show have been accepted: Indrawn Breath (the painting I performed “tree-age” on, as documented in a former post to this journal, and seen framed –with a reflection of me–below) and Salt Spring Summer (also see below). The [...]