Indholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2020 i The Pastel Journal

Hefferlin, who is adept in oil painting as well as pastels, finds pastels to be a great medium for cross-training, and perhaps, the best possible primer for mixing color in oils. A large pastel set presents each color in a wide array of values, temperatures and saturations, which are necessary to achieve when mixing oils. She tends not to blend or glaze with oils, but puts down color in spots of short, round brushstrokes—compared to longer marks in pastel. The processes are similar in that they break form into pure color as opposed to fields of blended color.…

I learned this technique while attending a workshop with Diana Sanford a few years ago. Since then, I’ve incorporated it into many of my abstract pastel paintings, but it could be used with other mediums. For pastel use, the result is an overlay of color, depth, texture—and a more interesting painting. I use a soft flat brush to gently apply clear gesso over my pastel work, keeping my brushstrokes light and gentle so as not to dirty the gesso. (Otherwise it can end up lifting the color and looking like mud.) Thin layers of gesso dry clear; thicker layers dry a little cloudy, but offer greater texture. While the gesso is still wet, I gently sweep the heat gun across the areas where I want to add texture. Bubbles, wrinkles…

Pastels are more than just addictive sticks of delicious color. There are many makers offering pastels with distinct characteristics, in different shapes and sizes, and in a variety of curated sets and color systems. It helps to have an idea of what’s out there before you shop so you can build a pastel collection that’s tailored to your preferences and needs. Pastels For Every Occasion To make a pastel, pigment is mixed with a minimal amount of a gum- or methylcellulose-based binder, then formed into sticks and dried. The crystalline particles in the pastel pigment reflect light, resulting in the luminous quality present in pastel paintings. Every manufacturer has its own formula, which accounts for the differences across brands. Perhaps the biggest distinction is the degree of hardness in a…

I must admit to being a bit of a wimp when it comes to plein air painting. Don’t get me wrong—I love it, but I need a little help out there. It can be intimidating: There’s the weather, the onlookers, the bugs, all that gear and, of course, the 360 degrees of overwhelming visual field. Sometimes it’s enough to send me packing, so I need all the help I can get. The one tool that I absolutely can’t live without is a viewfinder—an apparatus through which to look to compose and frame a scene, whether indoors or outdoors, to help narrow the focus from a whole cone of vision. Over the years I’ve tried most of the viewfinders on the market—big ones, small ones, plastic ones, digital ones—all in an…

As I sat on the rooftop deck of Casa de la Noche on my last night in San Miguel de Allende, eating pizza under the stars with new friends, I couldn’t believe it was just a few months prior that I’d first heard of this captivating city in Central Mexico. A friend who lived in Mexico years ago had recently extolled the town’s many virtues—the vibrant colors; the art schools and famous Parroquia, a majestic neo-Gothic church that towers over the city and glows vivid coral at sunset—so the place was already on my mind when I spied an ad for a January pastel workshop in San Miguel de Allende with pastel master Richard McKinley. My husband assured me he wouldn’t mind puttering around town while I painted, so I…

As a student at her Los Angeles high school, it never occurred to Bert Collins that art was anything but “a fun class.” It was the 1940s and the nation was embroiled in World War II. “I didn’t even know anybody who was an artist,” she says. Nearly 80 years later, Southern California pastelists consider Collins an icon for her mentoring skills, perennial enthusiasm and poetic landscapes. Indeed, her success as an artist is indisputable. At 92, Collins—who describes herself as a tonalist “with a hard line of realism”—still paints daily. Never mind that she’s confined to a wheelchair, can no longer move her head and can effectively use only one hand. She also continues to teach four days a week at her home-studio classroom. Her paintings are heavily collected,…

On a wedding anniversary early in her marriage, Kristin Divers received an unexpected present: a pair of steel-toe boots and a hard hat. Her husband, Lou, announced that he’d gotten permission to take her as a guest inside a steel mill. “I’m so excited for you to see what I do every day!” he said. Divers’ husband was, and still is, a consultant for the steel industry. The couple lives in Pittsburgh, and both have family ties to the steel and coal-mining industries. Even so, while steel may be ingrained in the culture of southwestern Pennsylvania, the mills aren’t places people can easily visit if they don’t work in the industry. So off they went to the steel mill. Divers’ husband took her into a room at least a third…

Cory Goulet starts every piece by turning on a CD in her studio. She lets the energy of the music course through her body, moving and dancing in front of her blank canvas. She listens to favorites like Nina Simone or Aretha Franklin—strong voices with upbeat tempos. Only then does she begin projecting her energy onto the canvas, working intuitively to paint, layer and create. Her work is deeply abstract. “You have to create something out of nothing,” Goulet says. Color is often her guide as she starts. “I love color, and in most of my work I use bright, bold colors,” says the artist. Sometimes she’ll start with a few pre-selected colors that lead her in a particular direction. “Other times, it’s just grab and go, and I build…

The New Mexico sky comes alive with clouds during the summer monsoon season: Delicate cumuli swell into towering thunderheads dragging dark brooms of rain across the mesa tops. Toward sundown, the tattered vestiges of storms glow orange and red and purple. Santa Fe painter Nancy Silvia finds nourishment for her art in this expansive, high desert sky. The artist’s early days, however, were spent back East, near the ocean in Connecticut. Filling her childhood memories are images of a distant horizon line sharply drawn by the edge of the sea and paintings she viewed of the New England coast. These, combined with the freedom and solitude of being an only child, prompted her to take up drawing and painting as a way to interpret her surroundings. “Observing and recording the…

In this display of various pastels, I’ve arranged the sticks from hard to soft—not scientifically but based on my own experience—starting with the hardest (a Prismacolor NuPastel) at six o’clock and moving counterclockwise to end with the softest (a Henri Roché). PanPastels, which have a unique consistancy and application system, are in the center. Included in the arrangement are: • NuPastels (hard) • Art Spectrum and Rembrandt (medium) • Unison, Mount Vision, Girault, Jack Richeson Handrolled and Blocks, Art Spectrum Soft Squares, Great American, Terry Ludwig, Schmincke, Blue Earth, Sennelier, Diane Townsend, Roché and PanPastels (soft)…

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket AVOID THE AVOIDABLE Often, rejection is the result of subjective forces, such things as taste, trends and other people’s priorities or insecurities. Other times, it’s the result of oversights for which the artist is responsible. It could be sloppy presentation, for example, or an exhibition proposal or grant application that’s lacking in substance or clarity. Take steps to avoid careless mistakes that needlessly set you up for rejection. Applying for one grant a year or submitting work to one gallery is only a gesture. You’re unlikely to get results from minimal effort. Instead, create opportunities for things to happen. Think big and broad. Make inroads in many directions. What you want is a lot of baskets with lots of eggs. Try, Try…

Step 1: First, I laid in the initial drawing, focusing on the angles of the rolls’ sides to show the correct perspective. Then I began an underpainting on the top left corner. Step 2: I looked at photos from other areas of the same mill to see what the windows look like. I closed the opening in the wall with similar windows to solve the problem of the blown-out background area in my reference photo and to keep the focus on the rolls. Step 3: I continued to work, adding layers and detail across the top third of the painting before adjusting the easel height. Step 4: Next, I began to work on the underpainting and the values across the middle third of the composition. I also began the under-painting…

Step 1: On a warm-toned pastel paper, I began mark-making using various sizes of charcoal. Then I started blocking in color. I did not set any predetermined agenda. Step 2: I continued mark-making and blocking in large shapes of color, keeping it light and letting the background color show through. Step 3: I used a sponge to push color into the paper and create texture within the shapes. I kept it loose, with lots of movement. At that point, I rotated the image to keep things abstracted. Step 4: I continued adding marks in pastel and charcoal to further define and build up the shapes, colors and values. Step 5: More sponge work was necessary to further define the abstracted shapes and points of contrast. I added details with pencil…

Silvia’s love of landscape has prompted her to engage in a number of residencies in scenic places, including Cape Cod National Seashore, in Massachusetts; Acadia National Park, in Maine; Aztec Ruins National Monument, in New Mexico; the Ragdale Foundation, in Illinois; and the Ucross Foundation, in Wyoming. “Some of our National Parks offer residency grants to artists in many disciplines,” she says. “Exploring a new locale, particularly for a landscape artist, offers an expansion of one’s subject matter and the benefit of a period of uninterrupted work time. These grants differ from park to park with different guidelines and deadlines. Time periods are commonly two to four weeks. Obligations typically include conducting a demonstration or workshop for the public and donating a piece of art after the residency. There has…

Step 1: I look through my DIY viewfinder to determine my composition, holding it close to my eyes for a broad view and at arm’s length for a more cropped view. I use the guidelines to help me place elements in the scene. I determine what’s in the very center and how that relates to my eye level. Step 2: While on-site, I create a thumbnail sketch that uses the same proportions, dividing it into four quadrants as seen through the viewfinder. Step 3: Because my viewfinder has guidelines that demark four quadrants, I can easily determine where the major elements in the scene sit in my composition. I always do a thumbnail sketch. Once I have a sketch I like and think will make a strong composition, I’ve done…