Indholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2023 i The Pastel Journal

At what point can I call myself an artist? This is a question that vexes most artists somewhere along the creative journey. Do I need a degree? A certain number of workshop hours? Do I need to have a well-stocked studio to qualify? Must I be making art fulltime? Am I an artist if I don't sell or exhibit my work? How “good” do I have to be before I can declare myself an artist—and how am I to judge? As with all practitioners of art, the pastelists featured in this issue find themselves at different places in respect to their art lives, offering a reminder that every artist has a unique story to tell. Vladimir Zlotskiy (page 18), for example, defines himself on his Instagram page as “an IT…

VLADIMIR ZLOTSKIY GREW UP IN FEODOSIA, a small town in Crimea with a rich, 2,500-year-old history. The picturesque town sits on the Black Sea, surrounded by hillsides and mountains. The town has been home to many famous marine and landscape artists, including Ivan Aivazovsky (18171900), Konstantin Bogaevsky (1872-1943) and Maximilian Voloshin (1877-1932). As a young boy, Zlotskiy attended the children's art school there, where the curriculum was steeped in a long tradition of art history taught by master instructors who focused mostly on watercolor still life and landscapes. Though he didn't consider a long-term career as an artist at the time, his early training offered him a taste of the excitement that art can produce and prompted his love of painting. A TURNING POINT Aside from his early training and…

Elena Degenhardt's mesmerizing waterscapes, painted with an impressionistic touch, enthrall the viewer with intricate swirling patterns, luminescent hues and submerged figures yielding to the water's glassy depths. Time spent with one of Degenhardt's more meditative sea paintings, such as Meditation V. The Subconscious (page 26) may prompt the emergence of untapped emotions or ideas—or perhaps reawaken memories that branch into additional layers of inquiry. The artist relies on similar threads of discovery to develop new ideas for a piece. As Degenhardt says, “Like deep waters, human minds have their unreachable depths, both intriguing and repelling.” Not surprisingly, the artist finds immense solace in the sea. “When I'm there, swimming and floating, it's actually the only time, apart from when I paint it, that I feel adequate and at peace with…

Prior to becoming a parent 15 years ago, Bartels travelled the world to observe animals in their natural habitats. “It was wonderful to see how they behaved and how they hunted,” she recalls, adding that the experience provided much inspiration for her artwork. “My husband and I traveled to South Africa, Botswana and Zambia, as well as Norway, Sweden, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands,” she says. “Nature was the key focus of our trips. That's why 80 percent of my work is animal drawings. We've seen a lot of beautiful places and creatures, but when my son was born, those big trips stopped. Maybe we'll start traveling again in a few years.”…

Materials • 70% isopropyl alcohol: I've found that 91% alcohol dries too quickly and doesn't allow me to move the color around enough. • Large, flat synthetic paintbrush: I prefer the marks I can make with a flat brush, and a synthetic brush is more durable for working on a sanded pastel paper. • Viva-brand paper towels for dabbing off alcohol from the brush • Nupastel 266-P (pale vermilion), and 305-P (spruce blue)—and other pastels • UART 400 paper mounted on acidfree foam board For this reason, I tend to use this technique in scenes that are naturally cool or that have a lot of green in them. A sunset scene is another situation when I employ this technique, as the vermilion creates an appropriately warm color harmony. In addition,…

Making art can be expensive, but savvy pastelists have a few tricks up their sleeves to keep costs down—without sacrificing quality. We asked six talented pastelists—Cory Goulet, Jeri Greenberg, Lisa Gleim Jones, Karen Margulis, Mary Ann Pals and William Schneider—for their money-saving advice. Here's what they had to offer. Stick Reviver I keep a small container of coarse cornmeal nearby to clean my pastels as I work. When a stick gets dirty from handling or rubbing against other sticks, I just pop the pastel into the container and lightly shake it or manually roll the stick around. This works like a charm. A five-pound bag costs only about $2 and lasts for months. —Lisa Gleim (lisagleimfineart.com) Easel Lighting Since I live in the upper Midwest where cool natural light is…

While studying at the Art Students League of New York, Zlotskiy learned many of the fundamental lessons that continue to guide his creative process: 1. Don't neglect drawing mistakes in long poses, hoping to fix them later with color. Good drawing is always the basis for a good result. 2. Drawing from life and short poses are an artist's fitness training. Don't try to creale a masterpiece during a short pose but rather free up your mind and use this time to focus on your hand-eye coordination. 3. Ask yourself, if the pose were to end after two minutes and you knew you'd never get back to it—what would the drawing require most? This helps you drop the background noise and concentrate on the most important things. 4. Discover the gesture of the…

Artist's Toolkit • Surface: Clairefontaine Pastelmat, in mostly 10-, 12- or 15-inch squares and 8x12-, 10x14- or 12x15-inch rectangles • Semi-Hard Pastels: Rembrandt sticks, along with other brands of pastel pencils, such as Faber-Castell, Derwent, Conte, Carbothello, Cretacolor and Koh-I-Noor • Soft Pastels: Caran d'Ache…

The subject of women's personal ablutions preoccupied Edgar Degas (1834–1917) for decades and inspired variations in oil, sculpture, monotype and pastel. By the mid-1880s, Degas had amassed for inclusion in the final Impressionist exhibition a series that he described as “women bathing, washing themselves, drying themselves, toweling themselves, combing their hair or having it combed.” The description suggests an unusually intimate preoccupation, far removed from the historical narratives Degas sought to paint in his youth. The same acuteness of observation he brought to other genres was now focused on the bathroom and boudoir. Given the majestic design of the main figure and the body's tactile presence, Woman Having Her Hair Combed may be the finest figure Degas produced in any medium. Surprisingly, the pastel does not seem to have been…

Recently, Zlotskiy's artistic process has evolved to include music as a source of inspiration. During the time of COVID stay-athome precautions, he switched to Zoom sessions and used photos for his subjects as he turned to art as a refuge from the daily stress of the world. “At this time, I was drawing at home and noticed that listening to music while drawing and painting freed me up and pushed me to experiment and make turns that I wouldn't have attempted under different circumstances,” he says. The artist has a Spotify playlist that he frequently listens to while making art. “Every melody and song in this list carries some excitement and emotional value for me—and often is a huge help in my process, especially when I feel stuck,” he says.…

Dutch artist Sandra Bartels has an international following. A finalist three times in the prestigious Wildlife Artist of the Year competition, organized by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, in England, Bartels’ work has been exhibited at The Mall Galleries, in London. That's quite an achievement given that she has only seriously been depicting wildlife since 2017. This year she's also a finalist in the Strokes of Genius 14 competition, organized by Artists Network and Artists Magazine. Her drawing Into the Light (left) of a cheeky little robin with his head tilted as if to say, “I know I'm gorgeous,” was published in The Best of Drawing: Strokes of Genius 14 in November. In the Netherlands, Bartels’ work is shown in two established galleries: Gallery Honingen, in Gouda, and Grachten Gallery,…