Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2020 i The Pastel Journal

Daniel Massad (page 18) tells the story of the moment his destiny as an artist was sealed. He was 10 years old and had just spent the day at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C. His encounters with works by Degas and Dali, among others, inspired a lifelong enthusiasm for art and painting. Massad’s story is one that I know will resonate with many of you who can trace your artistic identities back to childhood. Still, this isn’t everyone’s story. Halla Shafey (page 34), for example, got a late start in art. She began her professional career as an economist, consulting for prominent organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations, UNESCO and UNICEF. At age 40, however, Shafey took a break from this work and committed…

10 Ways to Tell You’re a Pastel Artist Take this quiz to see which kind of pastel artist you are! artistsnetwork.com/go/pastel-artist How to Achieve Brilliant Color in Pastel Learn how David Napp fills his pastel art with resplendent color and bold mark-making. artistsnetwork.com/go/brilliant-pastel To Blend or Not to Blend? William Schneider offers advice for using a combination of blended and unblended areas in your pastels to create interest and overall unity. artistsnetwork.com/go/blend-or-not Keep Your Pastel Palette Fresh See Stan Sperlak’s advice for avoiding a predictable palette. artistsnetwork.com/go/sperlak-palette…

Chicago artist Mike Barret Kolasinski paints all seasons, but winter is his favorite time of year to interpret. “I love rendering the winter landscape wrapped in nature’s blanket,” he says. The artist often travels more than 60 miles to gather reference material, using public transportation to reach the point where the city ends and the natural world begins. A city dweller who has made a lifestyle choice to not drive, Kolasinski often continues beyond the city limits by bike. “It’s exciting to bicycle a back road and come across a meandering stream reflecting a magical moment of optical delight,” he says. A supportive group of friends and family also helps, driving while he pays for gas. Very much a planner, he organizes trips for canoeing, cross-country skiing or camping—outings to…

Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757) assumed an essential role in the history of pastel painting. In the early 18th century, she transformed pastel from a sketching tool to a medium of significance, just in time to help initiate the French rococo style. Her portraits, genial in spirit, deft of touch and executed with a feel for luxuriant textures, made her famous throughout Europe. Scores of poems were dedicated to her; one sonnet concludes, “your colors have given Light to the world.” Carriera was born in Venice, and started her career painting miniature portraits on ivory. She became a protégé of Venetian artist Antonio Maria Zanetti; her pastel portrait of him went the 18th-century equivalent of viral, initiating her international reputation. In 1705, Carriera was elected to the Accademia di San Luca, in…

To view a G. Daniel Massad painting is not unlike witnessing a fusion of past with present, of dream with memory, of the known with the unknown. His hybrid form of hyperrealism diverges from that of photorealists. Through his fine draftsmanship and refined techniques in pastel, he creates worlds in which intensely real objects appear fettered to memory, imagination, reverence and symbol. His art is the kind that transforms the commonplace. Massad compares his intention to that of an insect consuming and making a leaf into a home. “Self-expression isn’t my conscious aim,” he explains, “though I know that these images come out of millions of my own memories—of life and art and especially art that reenacts some part of the world. But the personal meanings embedded in these images…

Kolasinski is unlikely to paint snow just by grabbing a stick of white. “Snow is very refractive, with many values and colors, so I make sure I observe the colors that it reflects from the landscape surrounding it. Snow will reflect the sky if there’s nothing else around,” he says. the artist offers these pointers: • If the sky has a warm hue, the highlights in your snow should carry some of that warmth. • If the sky is bright blue, snow should be a more subdued reflection of that hue. • To achieve the near-incandescent look of sunlit snow, paint the sky a slightly darker value and start the snow with a mid-value warm color, painting your way up to a lighter value. • For snow in shadow, work the same way, building…

That old saying, “The more you look, the more you see,” rings true when it comes to plein air painting. The more you see, the more you’ll want to include in your piece. Learning to edit a composition, however, is one of the most important skills an artist can develop. On your next excursion, don’t paint: Just bring a sketchbook and observe the location. Take notes and make thumbnails. Take photos on site and then, once you’ve gained better knowledge of your subject, work on the painting back in the studio.…

Marilee and I each use Heilman Design pastel boxes with easels on tripods. Hers is a mini-pack and mine the slightly larger backpack size. We work on fairly small surfaces, often using 9x12-inch sheets of Colourfix papers clipped to a small board. I also like gray Ampersand Pastelbords. The different formats and sizes can add a challenge and move an artist “outside the box” of horizontal landscapes. Nate, who works in oils, uses the U.go plein air pochade box by NewWave and favors Williamsburg paints. He’s young, though—and may yet discover the joys of pastels.…

When painting summertime forests, fields and foliage, landscape painters often find the abundance of green challenging. Capturing the complexity of nature’s greens when “everything is green” can be an exasperating, daunting effort. My own approach to developing various rich greens has evolved more through practice than through scholarly scientific analysis. Most of my paintings have a watercolor underpainting that converses with subsequent pastel layers. With each painting, I explore new options and build on what I’ve learned can work. Although we’re focusing on green here, these techniques can be applied to any color. Feel free to adapt them for different pigments. Color can be difficult to discuss because any attempt to analyze a color by tugging on the loose thread of a specific characteristic, inevitably unravels the entire fabric of…

At the age of 10, Massad accompanied his father on one of his business trips to Washington, D.C. On his way to a meeting, his father dropped him off at the National Gallery of Art (NGA), where Massad spent the day. “It was my first experience with original fine art, and I fell in love with Vermeer, Chardin, Degas and Dali’s The Sacrament of the Last Supper. In retrospect, I know my vocation as an artist began right there—though I couldn’t have put it into words at the time.” Years later, after both his parents had died, Massad started thinking about donating one of his paintings to a museum as a memorial gift. “The NGA had already gone through the lengthy process of accepting an earlier work of mine as…

Painting a location at night provides an opportunity to open up the possibilities with a more daring palette and to see a darkening scene in a new light. “If you’re willing to be a bit more risky with some of your colors,” says New Jersey artist Stan Sperlak, “staying close to a logical arrangement of values and tones while slipping in some unexpected choices—that’s what makes it art.” ADJUSTING TO THE DARK Sperlak used to do almost all of his work en plein air, heading out in the dark to observe or capture evening scenes or to set up for predawn painting, working in a 5x7 or 8x10 format. “I would go out with a headlamp, like a coal miner, or a hard hat with LED lights on it,” he…

Time is limited in plein air competitions, where one’s output must be large—and finished. Artists don’t have the luxury of searching all day to locate the perfect spot. One of the most valuable tools for finding a scene quickly is a local map, and a good way to get started is to head to the water—a river, lake or shoreline. My home town, Cincinnati, sits along the Ohio River. There are paths near most of the bridges that local fishermen use to get down to the water. These paths were easy to navigate—even with my painting gear—and they afforded the grand river views I captured in Hot Summer Morning (above) and High Water (left).…