Autumn Field (12x12) by Marla Baggetta

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.”—John Donne

Show us one or more pastel paintings you’ve done that were inspired by the beauty of autumn. E-mail your image(s) as JPGs with a resolution of 72 dpi to pjedit@fwmedia.com by October 22, 2009. Include the title, dimensions and a brief description. Please type “Creative Spark” in the subject line and include your name, e-mail and mailing address. The “editors’ choice” will be published in the February 2010 issue of the magazine.

Using the finished work, Red, Yellow, Blue (top; pastel on paper, 29½x22½) as a model, Jimmy Wright painted Study From Red, Yellow, Blue (bottom; pastel on paper, 10½x14½), a more graphic and turbulent version of the same composition. To read the full text of Wright's challenge, cick here.

To join in the fun, show us an example of a pastel painting in which you reinterpreted a previously finished work. E-mail your image/s (4x6-inch JPGs with a resolution of 72 dpi) and a description to pjedit@fwmedia.com by June 22, 2009. Type “Creative Spark” in the subject line and include your name, e-mail and mailing address. The “editors’ choice” will receive a $250-value fine art media gift basket, including a six-month subscription to ArtistNetwork.tv online video workshops, $60 worth of North Light art books or DVDs; the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Pastel Journal CDs; and a one-year subscription (or free renewal) to The Pastel Journal, The Artist’s Magazine or Southwest Art.

Come back soon to see the winners of our last Creative Spark challenge, Perpetual Motion.

Features
One Still Life, Three Visions
By Anne Hevener
Explore the power of creative expression when three painters—Leslie Lillien Levy, Claudia Seymour and Rainie Crawford—paint from a single still life setup.

Bold Variations
By Sarah A. Strickley
In the first of our 10th Anniversary “Artist Interview Series” installments, we chat with Jimmy Wright about his latest encounters with the still mesmerizing sunflower.

Sacred Silence
By Deborah Secor
Elizabeth Mowry, the second painter in our “Artist Interview Series,” talks about her current experience with pastels, landscape painting, and how her creative goals have evolved.

Regal Resonance
By Ken Gofton
British artist and Royal Academician Anthony Eyton, who finds inspiration in a variety of subjects, turns his artist’s eye to everything from portraits, to botanical gardens, to abandoned power plants.

The Pastel Royals
By Ken Gofton
Four members of Britain’s Royal Academy also share the distinction of honorary status in the Pastel Society UK, making them the “crown jewels” of England’s pastel scene.

Cosmos of Pattern
By Tamera Lenz Muente
Rick Stevens’ abstracted landscapes burst with colorful patterns that mimic the naturally occurring patterns of the land.

Columns
Art Matters
By Jessica Canterbury
Find out where pastels and pigs meet, celebrate Old Masters, and discover new online videos.

Pastel Pointers
By Richard McKinley
When a photograph must be your reference, use your tools to make sure it captures the live experience as much as possible.

Artist’s Viewpoint
By Margot Schulzke
When it comes to the use of black and white in painting, there are some gray areas.

Studio Smarts
By Deborah Secor
Discover a few illuminating tips for creating a well-lit studio.

Creative Spark
By Jimmy Wright
Sharpen your descriptive powers by returning to a subject you know for reinterpretation.

To order your copy of the June 2009 issue of The Pastel Journal, click here.

Alchemy (25½x39¾) by Peter Seltzer

I use a responsive method of painting, feeling out the areas where I need to strengthen light, subdue it, or emphasize elements of the composition. It’s not uncommon for me to spread the focus across the picture plane. Instead of having one isolated area that’s the main focus, I tend to allow for the eye to move across the composition with relatively equal attention to the elements in the eye’s path.

Alchemy is a good example of a painting that works in this way. There’s a lot going on in this piece, to say the least, but if you really look at it, you’ll see there’s a certain repetition of forms, horizontals and elements that move the eye across. Working this way demands that you have a good degree of control over your movement, so that the viewer’s eye moves.

Creating rhythm brings a subtle organization to a potentially chaotic composition containing many elements.  Just as there is rhythm in music that underlies the melody and helps move us through the song, we can also create visual rhythm, which guides the viewer’s eye through the painting. 

Try using some similar shapes and sizes, repetition of color and even similar negative spaces to establish unobtrusive flow.  There is always a delicate balance in achieving movement. Can you move the viewer’s eye without being too obvious? You don’t want the rhythm to overtake the melody.

Try This at Home
Show us one of your pastel paintings (or several) and tell us what you did to direct the viewer’s eye through the composition. E-mail images to pjedit@fwpubs.com (as a 4x6-inch JPG image with a resolution of 72 dpi) by April 20, 2009. Type “Creative Spark” in the subject line and include your name, e-mail and mailing address. The “editors choice” will receive a half-stick set of new Colourfix Pastels, a Rainbow Pack of Colourfix Paper and a Colour Shaper blending set (total value $160).

In continuation of Anne’s post about creativity and how activities such as reading warm up our creative muscles, I thought I’d share a link to a like-minded new blog. The Portland Museum of Art (in Maine) has launched its first blog, On Reading Online (www.portlandmuseum.org/about/blog). The PMA folks created this forum in celebration of National Book Month and their (just-closed) photography exhibition, “André Kertész: On Reading,” to share thoughts and ideas about books and reading.

And speaking of books and reading, another good recent read has been “Shadow of the Wind” (2001), by Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It's a beautifully written—sometimes even chill-inducing—ode to books, with a “DaVinci Code”-esque twist. This is a novel that makes you stop and consider all of the reasons you love to read, and remember those certain books that have made their own special mark in your life.

Take some time this weekend to nurture your creative side. How will you unwind?

Congratulations to Virginia Larrea, of Tampa, Fla., for her winning entry in Carole Katchen’s Creative Spark challenge featured in the October issue of the magazine. The challenge was to “mix it up,” and paint with multiple media. Click here for Larrea’s most unusual story about her use of mixed media, which, in this case, involved beer.

Larrea won a package of UART sanded pastel papers worth $140. Our thanks to UART for their generous donation.

Look for the next Creative Spark challenge in the February 2009 issue of The Pastel Journal.

Congratulations to the August issue Creative Spark entries that took honorable mentions. The challenge was to put a neglected color to work. Here’s how the artists did so:


“Color is my passion, which is why I love pastels, and why I’ve used almost every color somewhere in my paintings. I often use turquoise, but the use is usually limited to a few minor strokes as a an accent or as a means of balancing out the greens in a landscape. However, making turquoise the dominate color in my painting is something I’ve definitely wanted to try. For several months I’ve been creating a series of Philadelphia scenes, mostly of landmarks and historic buildings—and, of course, a few Philly skylines.

“Since I was painting a hot and hazy afternoon scene of Philadelphia, I chose bright orange to exhibit very warm—but strong—light. I used different values of turquoise as the sky and water, sort of an envelope, which balanced out the orange. Then I softly glazed the whole painting with again with turquoise. Fun experiment!”




“Pink is a color I rarely use except for highlights in skies or around the rim of an object, rarely as the predominant color. I was very taken by a spray of very subtle pink grass behind three dark purple flowers. It was the pink background that caught my eye and presented the challenge of making it look soft, but not too sweet. Subtle hints of pink were added to the green background and in the foreground flowers to make the painting work.”




“I’ve been especially fascinated with the exotic pastels, which include metallic, iridescent, pearlescent and fluorescent colors. I tend to favor blues and purples, which is reflected in my home decor, my clothes and, of course, my painting. The one untouched color, pristine in its paper wrapping, was fluorescent lime green.

“I decided to paint an unusual perspective, an extreme close-up, of a common fruit, the kiwi. Once an exotic winter import from Australia, most kiwis are now grown in my home state of California. The crowning creative inspiration came from adding a few strokes of that virgin fluorescent lime green to the rear kiwi slice, which made the fruit just pop. This pastel became the main color focus for the front kiwi; the juicy fruit pulp glows with the fluorescent lime green. Adding this color to my palette truly unleashed creative sparks.”

Congratulations to Janet Sullivan of Missoula, Montana, for her winning pastel, Midsummer Storm (10x8), in Carole Katchen’s August Creative Spark challenge. The artist won a 75-piece workshop set of Mount Vision Pastels (thanks for your generosity!). The challenge was to put a neglected color to work. Here’s how Sullivan did so:

“Working primarily as a landscape/plein-air painter here in Montana, my dominant color palette consists of blues, greens and the many other grayed down hues available. In fact, the Mount Vision storm set is centrally located in my collection.

“During one winter here in Missoula, I looked out my window day after day to see a white fog hovering over the ground covered with snow. Even the bare tree branches had thick layers of hoarfrost. After days of this dreary gray and white scene, I decided to pull out those neglected colors that pile up and get shoved aside.

“I live on a hill over looking the valley and watch the storms roll in and out of town. Using the sky, trees and river below as a subject, I went to work harmonizing bright colors that work well together.”

Rumor has it that Sarah Jessica Parker is pitching a reality show involving visual artists a la Bravo’s Project Runway.

The scoop, according to NY Daily News, is that the program—a collaborative effort by Pretty Matches (Parker’s production company) and Magical Elves (Project Runway, Top Chef)—will include creative challenges between artists across different media and feature a panel of prominent critics. To be fair, I am a fan of Runway, although I never got to see the 2006 series Artstar—which, from what I’ve read, sounds similar. Did anyone catch it? What are your thoughts on reality TV reaching the art world?

On Sunday the Minneapolis Institute of Arts unveils Georgia O’Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction on its third and final tour stop. Through Jan. 6, attendees will be able to view in person 42 of the legendary artist’s pastels, charcoals, watercolors, pencil drawings, oils and sculptures embodying her creative voice and continued persuit of the abstract.

Here’s a brief introduction from the MIA:
O'Keeffe's exploration of abstraction placed her at the forefront of the American avant-garde. While most retrospective exhibitions of O'Keeffe's art begin, appropriately, with her breakthrough abstract charcoal drawings of 1915, the fact that she continued to paint in this mode throughout her career is almost always overshadowed by the popularity of her more representational canvases. Like many of her peers, she took daring risks as she worked, experimenting adventurously with color, scale, and composition. What truly distinguished O'Keeffe from her contemporaries, however, was her innovative and consistent approach to abstraction: an approach rooted not in esoteric theories and rigid, grid-oriented geometry, but rather in a highly personal interpretation of her subject matter that she consistently realized through a unique vocabulary of circular forms.

Also on the site is a slideshow with audio from curator Sue Canterbury.

A parent at my daughters’ school pointed out this Web site as a fun summertime activity for kids, but it’s a fun summertime activity for anyone! With the Great Pyramids of Egypt standing as the only remaining “Wonder of the World,” the New7Wonders Foundation (created in 2001) launched a global poll to select the New 7 Wonders of the World. Use your artist's eye, appreciation for creative work, and familiarty with artistic challenges to help the world select the most “wondrous” architectural achievements dating any time before the year 2000. A list of 21 nominated sites includes such marvels as The Taj Mahal (built in 1630 A.D.), The Acropolis of Athens (built between 450 and 330 B.C.), and The Great Wall of China (220 B.C and 1368 - 1644 A.D). Winners will be announced July 7, 2007, at the Official Declaration ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal, which means—today—there are 18 days left to vote!

Image of The Taj Mahal copyrighted by www.Historylink101.com and found at India Picture Gallery

There's a reason winning an award in an art competition feels good. I mean, who doesn't want to be recognized for having produced outstanding work?! Such affirmation of one's artistic output is both personally fulfilling and sometimes, career-making. As long as an artist avoids the dangerous path of creating work with an aim to please a juror, and not him- or herself, competition can be a healthy way to inspire productivity. Afer all, there is perhaps nothing more motivating than a deadline! If you could use a creative kickstart--an inspiring reason to start a painting, finish a painting or simply have photographed what you've already accomplished, here are two notable deadlines to get on your calendar:

1. The Pastel Society of America is currently accepting slide entries from pastel artists (members and non-members) for their 35th annual juried "Pastels Only" exhibition to take place at the National Arts Club in New York City September 7 to September 30. The cost is $25 for one entry; $35 for two entries; and $45 for three entries, which is the limit. The deadline for entry is July 10. For more information, view the prospectus on the PSA Web site.

2. The Pastel Journal is ready to receive entries for its ninth annual Pastel 100 competition. Five top award winners and five place-winners in five categories will win a combined $15,000 worth of prizes, including the $5,000 Jack Richeson/Unison Pastel Best of Show award. In addition, winners will have their work published in the April 2008 issue of the magazine, along with 70 honorable mentions. Slide and digital entries are both accepted at a cost of $12.50 per entry, and the entry deadline is September 4. For more information, see these guidelines.

Since a deadline can often go sour, becoming something that stifles rather than motivates your work, make sure that your commitment is to the creative process--not the deadline. And have fun!