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Barbara Jaenicke Teaches Three Snow Scenes

Heading Somewhere Warm

8" x 10" 

Pastel

Barbara Jaenicke

Barbara Jaenicke, of Roswell, Georgia, blogs here.  I have become a fan of her teaching style, and want to share the following three posts from her blog with you. They unpack the mysteries of pastelling snow scenes, and she is careful to advise you to do some plein airing in order to keep it real if you also wish to use reference photos.  Good advice, and wonderful pastels, Barbara!

The Many Colors of Snow, Part 1.
The Many Colors of Snow, Part 2.
The Many Colors of Snow, Part 3.

The Winter Studio

 Sort through old supplies...

 Winter backlight, or, It looks like my head is Photoshopped on...

Gray days ahead, but that's what I like!

I was motivated by Maggie Latham's post, Ten Clutter Busting Ideas, to clean up my own act in the studio.  First:  my desks!  They are the worst clutter keepers offending me right now.


If I have any tips for you, I will pass them along next time.

Raphael Drawing Passion.

Claudia Hajian, who blogs as Museworthy, is one of my favorite blog reads.  Go here to see her post on Raphael's drawings.  Exquisite.


Claudia wrote one of the Top Ten Posts of 2009.

Color Charts

Sub Text Red 

6.25" x 8.25"

Pastel
Casey Klahn
point & shoot camera

Via Jan Olsen, at Observe Closely, here are the links to online color charts for many of our favorite pastel brands.  I order the hand made charts from Dakota, but sometimes online is just handy.

Blogged Book

Many of you are fans of Deborah Secor, who blogs at Deborah Secor: Art and Faith. She has embarked on a unique new project, which is a book on pastel landscape painting. The unique twist? She is blogging the whole book a chapter at a time, and it is free to you the viewer. Deborah's expertize in teaching will be available to you at LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN PASTELS.

Very generous of you, Deborah, and I look forward to each page!


Photo credit: raaez at Photobucket

Three Things - Tree School

Maples with Blue
8.1" x 6.5"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

One thing I glean from this image is the necessity to compose the whole picture when featuring trees. Direction, the rule of threes, and (believe it or not) a controlled palette are three important lessons.



Direction.

Dianne Mize wrote about this recently, and I want to use this image as an example of directional strokes. The big, scumbled strokes are unified. In other words, there aren't a bunch of big marks, plus small, finicky lines, plus whatever. This image uses the same types of strokes. The directionality is strong, with a diagonal steeply rising to the right. A strong violet horizontal provides a counter pose, and electric greens give an entrance for the eye at a shallower diagonal in the foreground.

The Rule of Threes.

New blogger (and my High School classmate) Garth, wrote a post about the power of three. Maybe there is a mystic numerological reason for favoring threes, who knows? I employ a "rule of threes" in composition as a means of simplicity and yet there is still a depth of idea to three spaces.

This image is composed with sky, trees and ground. How basic can you get? Also, notice three basic colors, ultramarine or violet, green and yellow.

Controlled Palette

Two primaries and their intervening secondary limit this palette to, essentially, one side of the color wheel. That limitation provides power and unity to the color composition. The viewer is less apt to be confused looking for the whys and wherefores of a broad palette.

As a colorist, I choose to present full intensity colors as much as possible, and yet I want to keep nature recognizable. This image keeps the viewer grounded by utilizing local colors, yet they are "amped" to maximum intensity and contrasted against the olive green trunks. The value scale is spread from darks to middling values to not-too-lights.

The venerable maple tree is as evocative an image in America as any of nature's offerings. I tried to keep that in mind when I executed this green maple. I wrote more about this image in Deciduous Trees Expanded.

Tree Admiration

After Wolf Kahn, #1

9.5" x 6"
Pastel on Paper
Casey Klahn

Learn from other artists whose renderings of trees you love


Learn from other artists whose renderings of trees you love. Mark me down as a Wolf Kahn follower. His forests of trees are gesture rich, and pure blocks of color are woven into the whole. I did the drawing posted here directly from a WK as a study to try to "get" more of what his methods are.




Evening Pines, by Deborah Paris, gives a similar treatment of trees at a forest's edge. Atmosphere prevails, and I have a feeling that I am standing among the liquid air of 100 degree Georgia humidity at dusk. Her Tonalist style involves a limited palette and a narrow range of values. I can't help but feel completely present in these woods when I am looking at Evening Pines.

Albert Handell's Woods Interior expresses the abstract qualities of just tree trunks. His tree trunks have more texture with less apparent effort than almost any artist I know of.

All of the artists I've mentioned here take a very different approach to trees, and your tree style will become a signature of your own work.

See also:

Michael Chelsey Johnson
Jennifer Phillips
Tracy Helgeson
Susan Ogilvie
Marla Baggetta
Marla's new blog.

Thoughts on a Series

Spring Trees
4" x 4.5"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

Somewhere I read, recently, about tips for doing a series of paintings. Let's explore the practice of creating a group of works.

The economics of doing art in a series is perhaps the obvious reason that comes to mind. But, there is much more to the art series than that. As a matter of fact, without the underlying artistic rationale for painting a series, the results can often fall flat.

Do a series of similar works to get down on paper (or canvas) the fuller extent of your ideas. Are your pictures more than the representation of some objects? Do they have anything to say to the viewer of deeper meaning? Explore the nuances of a color composition, or of a particular place in all of it's complex facets.

Hang a series of ten paintings that share a coherent and well developed idea. You will be going past the technique and the handling of pastels; beyond the aesthetics of pleasant images. You will be expressing the depth of your artistic development, and revealing more clearly what your ideas are.

I would rather see your room of ten signature works hanging than a solitary Pollock at the MoMA, any day!

With these things in mind, what are some methods for creating a series of works?

1. Try to see a One Man Show at a local gallery or an artist focused Exhibition at the Museum. Notice what creates the continuity in this hanging. Likely the framing will be the same, and maybe even the sizes and aspects of the paintings will be uniform.
2. Either decide what you are trying to say with your artistic growth, or look very intently at what has been coming off of your easel. Is it trending in a certain direction? Is it new in some way for you?
   
3. I try to get my subjects or objects the same. Now, I am doing a series of deciduous trees which are drawn in the Eastern Washington setting. This is a departure from my typical conifers, and the change or growth is an important element of a successful series. Nicole Caulfield is doing still lifes in boxes, in the style of the Tromp L'oeil. Harry Bell did a series on water taxis in Venice (very unique). Joan DaGradi is doing post-Hurricane Katrina condemned houses in New Orleans.
4. One method to provide continuity is to not only follow an idea, but to repeat, limit or at least narrow your palette. The effect on your exhibition will be noticeable.
5. Especially for the pastelist, make a decision about what paper you will be doing your series on. Will the images be more coherent on the same paper brand and color? Maybe yes and maybe no - you'll need to decide, and possibly stock up on one particular paper.
   

Ready to take that next step in your artistic development? Hang a grouping of ten coherent pastel works, and remember to get someone to take your picture there!

Alpha List

I am proud to say
that I am a "K".

Expressive Plein Air Work

daviddrawsandpaints

In my quest to get back to nature in my drawing and pastels, I have been posting about my Plein Air Project, and over at The Colorist, the Wolf Kahn (drawing) Project. Continued snow, and other frictions are keeping things slow, but I do plan on posting a display of some of my recent works that have evolved because of these projects.

The work of David Cornelius of Scotland has been hitting the nail directly on the head. So free and loose are his plein air pastel drawings, that I will be looking in on his work at the same time that I look at Wolf Kahn's for lessons in how to stay loose. Don't miss his posts here and here, where he shows off his new works and his lightweight outdoor kit.

Fine Weather for Plein Air

M-27 Field Easel, Mabef

Holds the drawing board high and stable; arms support a box of pastels.

What kept me from making these logo banners for my various blog projects before now? I think they'll be a good way to highlight and keep organized the umpteen projects I have going simultaneously.

On the Plein Air front, I finally got out on the weekend to do some plein air with my new Field Easel. I price-shopped this Mabef M-27 easel, and found it available from a California art store for $25 cheaper than the next outlet. I'll review it for you when I get a little more practiced with it.

By the Heath Place
April, 2008
8.5" x 7.25"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

My experience was very rewarding. Of course, there was the mandatory "save" from the wind blowing over the kit. Looks like 5-6 MPH is the limit for wind behavior if I want to be happy at this easel. I have an artist's white clamp on umbrella, but it needs some modification to be workable. I found a hunter's tree stand umbrella for a third of the price of the art models, and it bungees onto the field easel like it was meant to be there. Nifty.

I have three images for my labors, but only two will make the cut. And, they will need the studio finish. I see now that one can't simply get "off the couch" and succeed at this plein air work.

Here's a fellow artist who is using a field easel set-up and who is, like myself, starting anew with the plein-air style. David Cornelius of Scotland.

French Post

NASA vieimage

Just in time for my visits around Europe, and later the world at large, is the update of the website at Art du Pastel en France. Now, their web sight offers a pathway to view a number of important French pastelists.

Also, see the Society of Pastelists in France. Société des Pastellistes de France. Founded in 1885, the society boasts the past memberships of Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt. If only the walls could talk!

We're concerned with the current artists, now. The link page is here: Liens.

Recommended pastellistes:

Camille Leblond
Le Coloriste!
Gwenneth Barth
Classic Realism
Thierry Citron
Plein Air Landscapes (exquisite technique)

The nation of France boasts archaeological evidence of the earliest known art, and is the home of one of the greatest art cultures on the planet. The 19th. and early 20th. centuries burned brightly for French commitment to fine art, and the continued place of art in her culture is strong.

Many pastel products hail from France, including pastels and paper from Sennelier, and pastels from Pastels Girault, and, widely considered the world's finest pastels, Henri Roche.

Another Poll

Which is your favorite make of soft pastel ?

Katherine asks this question at her Squidoo lens. Go about a third of the way down the page and reference the above header. If you didn't get enough of polling at my own recent poll, go there and vote your conscience. You already know my vote...

Jim Gola

Jim Gola is a neighbor (albeit distant) in the fine state of Washington. I had to look up Woodland, because I was fuzzy on its location. Now I see it's near the hopping town of Ridgefield. I once got run out of Ridgefield for being underage...but that's a long and off-topic story.

Back to Gola. Although he prefers his oils, I want to highlight his pastel paintings. He is adroit at using the sticks, and I hope you'll take a look at his website.

Galerie des Artistes - Sennelier

You may add your own Sennelier based pastels at their website. The link is here.

U.K. Pastels

The kids and Lorie and I watched The Santa Clause 3 last night. How do they keep making better sequels like that? Answer: Martin Short, Ann-Margret and Alan Arkin.

The kids think that Santa starts his Christmas Eve trip at Scotland, then moves on to Northern Ireland, etc., across to Norway and around Europe. You get the picture.

Here's my Christmas post visiting international pastel bloggers in England & the U.K.

Vivien Blackburn
Katherine Tyrrell
Lisa Bachman, who was featured in the last post.

Similar Stories

Untitled: Red, Gray, Blue
8" x 5"
Original Pastel
July 1st, 2007
Casey Klahn

Similar stories always pique my interest. Julene Baker, PSA, began her artist's life at about the Kindergarten age, and is self-taught. She works exclusively in pastel. Those are parallels to my own story.

I found Baker's interesting interview at an online art monthly entitled Practical Painting.

While you're at PP, you may enjoy this link to pastel tips.

Selected Pastel Artists

The pastel artists linked here represent the best that the medium has to offer. Enjoy.

Kim Fancher Lordier

Harvey Dinnerstein

Jim Few
Don't be distracted by the poor quality layout of this site. Few's art is among the best work anywhere today. His work, Sunday in the Park suggests space and modeled form with a great brilliance.

Sarah Blumenschein

Pastel Blogs

Noah Klocek, of Imageblock Blog, is known to many through his story board work at Pixar. I must have have seen his work in the special features sections of my kids' movies. Cars, perhaps? Shrek? His blog features many pastels, and they are atmospheric and active.

Klocek belongs to a group in the Bay area known as the Early Bird Painters, and their works are a treat to see, also. Perhaps it's the animation culture or something, but they are adept at the"digital makeover" of their paintings. I actually like the results that they get from these things, but I struggle to grasp the leap from plein air to digital results. Anyone care to inform me on that?

http://kimdenise.blogspot.com/
Luminous still lifes, among other things, and handy with a Nikon camera.

http://www.avelingartworks.com/
Stunning and atmospheric wildlife art.

http://www.members.shaw.ca/dfgray/home.htm
A neighbor to the North doing plein air seascapes with liveliness.