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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 it another [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I recently attended a fabulous exhibition of pre-Raphaelite paintings at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This group of English painters from the mid 1800′s decided that art had gone downhill after the Rennaissance painter Raphael and they determined to paint in the manner and style of the early Rennaissance painters (hence, pre-Raphaelite). The group included [...]
During a recent family visit, three of the women requested a “private” one-day intro to pastel workshop, so we rolled out the clouds… None of these gals had ever tried pastels before–pretty great results, eh? Congrats to all of you and keep pastelling! Next intro workshop, Aug 8/9 at Meta4 Gallery in Port Perry. As [...]
This May for the first time I splurged and traveled to Albuquerque New Mexico for the biannual International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) convention. It’s THE place to be for a pastel artist. Not only did I attend demos by long-admired pastel artists (including Liz Heywood-Sullivan, Les DeMille, Sean Dye and Jimmy Wright), I got [...]