The Studio Landscape in Pastel August 25-27 The Peninsula School of Art in Door County Wisconsin Date: Thu-Sat • Aug 25-27 Time: 9am-4pm Media: Pastel • Level: Advanced Beginner and Above Member Tuition: $325 • Non-Member Tuition: $350 Concept Explore the process of creating an evocative landscape painting from your own reference materials, with the [...]
pastel
I flip through a lot of art magazines. I look at magazines geared towards collectors and magazines geared towards other artists. I always find it fascinating to read about how a painter begins their work. There are the lucky few. The idea just seems to fall out of them. Sure–maybe they do some preparatory work that didn’t make [...]
So the rain finally stopped. Excited, I bundled up in damn near every article of clothing that I had brought with me. Slinging my bag of painting gear over my shoulder, I made my way down to the lake shore. I surveyed the scene. The blue sky and late afternoon sunshine were peaking through holes [...]
Pine Trees, the Golden Hour, 16×20″, pastel on panel by Jeffrey Smith I have noticed a lot of blog posts about the golden hour or magic hour in plein air painting. I think the best, and the one with a great little tool that will tell you when the golden hour is in your part [...]
To start the above pastel painting, I pulled out a less than successful oil plein air study I did in 2007. The nice thing about using an older, not-so- stellar paint study, is that I’ve found myself less inclined to stay very true to the plein air study, and more willing to make changes for the good of [...]
I had a few hours to get into the studio today, and thought this would be a great chance to revisit this wonderful potted begonia. It has been bringing a touch of spring to my studio for the last few weeks. I really needed it today. The high here in Minnesota didn’t reach much above [...]
I’ve been digging through my boxes of pastels to find colors that I can use to unify areas of the painting. To do this, I try to find a color that can be applied to a few different objects. An example would be the light blue that I was able to use in the background, [...]
I finally got back over to the studio today. We have been moving from an apartment in the Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis, to our first house, over in Saint Paul! I’m thrilled to be living back in Saint Paul, but moving is a lot of work! Every time that I’ve done it, I swear [...]
Today I thought it would be great to have another dose of spring. I have loved forsythia since I was a kid. I have some great memories of a forsythia bush that we had in our backyard that you could actually crawl inside of. It was like being surrounded by sunshine! This is a work in [...]
Still more longing for spring… Here in Minnesota, we have had a few days with above normal temperatures. Then, things dipped back down into the single digits. This little painting was done a hand made pastel panel. I started with a piece of Masonite. I prepped it with 2 layers of acrylic gesso. Then, I painted the surface the bright orange liquid [...]
