Pastel Scribbler Sep09

September 2009 ISSUE 4 VOLUME 1

EDITORIAL SCRIBBLEThe summer is behind us and hopefully you got a lot of light

and energy that will shine through your work. The approaching Autumn will be significant for our society. We are awaiting a small article in the Pastel Journal that should inform more Europeans about us, and we got our first Sponsor. The Colorfin LLC has kindly offered to award out Get Dusty winners. Find more on this in Get Dusty article.

We present the third and the last article in the Degas series where Charlie explains how Degas approached the colours. Find more on ballerinas in the interview with Charlie who is our Get Dusty winner for this month.

Gary explains in detail how he approaches painting with his Black Cat demo.

We introduce the listing for pastel workshops happening in Europe and list of Competitions that all Europeans can apply to. This for sure is not the final listing and you are welcome to add more.

Happy painting! Mario Vukeli

GET READY...GET DUSTYThe winner for month of June on theme Freedom by popular vote is Charlotte Herczfeld You can find a short interview with Charlie in this edition of Pastel Scribbler.

The Pastel Guild of Europe is proud to present our sponsor, Colorfin LLC, who makes the exciting new form of very soft pastels in a pan, PanPastel . Art materials created by artists, for artists. Become a member, take part in our monthly challenge Get Dusty, and grab the chance of winning a set of 20 PanPastels with Sofft tools included. Visit Get Dusty web site at pastelguild.eu/dusty.asp to learn more.

The theme for September is Bountiful.

the Pastel Scribbler 1(18)


ARTIST LOOKING AT: The colourful world of Degas By Charlotte Herczfeld

Much mystery surround Degass use of colour. As he didnt publish his methods, we have to look at what is written about Degas, and look at his paintings, to try to figure out how he painted colour. This article is one such attempt, luckily made easier because the many unfinished works of his that are preserved.

A few things are well-known facts. His preferred brand was the exclusive handmade Roch pastel, which is still made today, by a descendant of Henri Roch, in the same manner as during Degas time. Soft sticks of pigment in brilliant colours, with very little binder or filler, surely attracted Degas as much as any pastel artist today. An interesting curiosity is that Degas owned Quentin de la Tours own pastel sticks, as well as several works in pastel by de la Tour. In the picture we see Degass own box.

Tints were obviously accessible to him, and we know that Henri Roch made an amazingly wide and large array of colours and tints, much larger range than the brands of today. Degas used few earth tones, the main ones seem to be Red earths (iron oxide), and yellow earths like Sienna and the Ochres, which are very good for warming and brightening shadows, where the pure pigments would be too bright and lighten too much. He probably used charcoal with its soft blackness more than the harshly black pastels pigments.

In the second half of the 19th century, much research was made into colour, and a plethora of colour wheels were made. There is little evidence in writing that Degas took part in the discussions and research that the Impressionists and the scientists were involved in, but clearly he knew his colour theory. In his notebooks, there is a quick drawing of a colour wheel with divisions and written names of colour. One distinguished academic comments that the wheel is not accurately divided into equal proportions of the colours. When we compare Degass wheel to the proportions of Newtons colourwheel, we find that the similarity is more than coincidental.



Degas experimented with many techniques, and also developed his methods over the years. A method he used often was the following.

DrawingHe started with a charcoal drawing, carefully blocking in the areas that were to be dark. A surprising number of paintings are painted from start to finish on tracing paper, an indication that he indeed traced his photographs (see first article in the June issue of Scribbler.) The drawing was then fixated heavily, locking in the charcoal, so it wouldnt blend with the clear hues of the pastels and dirty the strokes, but provide darkness under the brilliant hues.

UnderpaintingFirst he used local colour that was blocked in using the side of a pastel stick, and this was

done over large areas. He may have strengthened the charcoal lines if he lost them.



In later years, he still blocked in large areas, but in other colours than local colours. Sometimes he used complementary colours. Degas may have used fixative or matte varnish over these layers. Degas noted that it was important to set the large structure of the painting first: It is essential, therefore, never to bargain with nature. There is real courage in attacking nature frontally in her great planes and lines, and cowardice in doing it in details and facets.

PaintingThen he started to build up the layers by scumbling over the previous layers, letting them

shine through. It seems like these strokes were shorter and not dense, but still rather large. There are reports that he used fixative often, so the strokes mixed optically but not physically. Lines with charcoal were applied as needed.



FinishingAs a painting progressed, he used hatching strokes, weaving colour like weft and warp, fixating often. This allowed him to fine-tune the effects he strived for, and the fixative solidified the previous layers, giving the painting more tooth. He used rather long parallel strokes that got the nick-name zbrure, zebra stripes, a very apt description, as he spaced his strokes. His marks often didnt follow the form of the object, instead they followed the form of the patch of colour. He would also focus more on painting the smaller details that were the embellishments on the solid compositions hed built up.

Of course he could stop this process at any given time, in any area. That means that, for example, a background could be left in barely more than the underpainting stage, while a chair was left in the middle

of the stages, and the figure brought to full completion. That would put most emphasis where he wanted it, as our eyes tend to see the more varied and worked surface as the area of interest. In the unsigned and unfinished Woman drying herself we can see how the wall is started in a warm orange-red, and then worked over with blues and greens. He is using the whole spectrum, making greys and neutrals by adding complementaries and other colours.

By working in this manner, Degas was able to create areas of complex glowing colour that defied description, mimicking the way the eye sees colour, which in is reflected light bouncing off a surface. Denis Rouart commented that Degas used the technique of making colours play against each other by superimposition. Regarding transparency, Rouart said that Degas achieved the effect by working in successive layers, not covering the lower layer entirely but letting it show through.



One of his models, called Pauline, tells what she saw of his practice: ... dancer at the barre reappeared in a number of pastels. In one, she was dressed in green and stood out against a background of violet; in another, the background was yellow and the costume red, and in a third she appeared in a pink tutu against a ground of green. Further he painted his subjects with different tones, endlessly varying the colours...

It startled his contemporaries when he worked over complementary colours. George Jeanniot may have seen something like this picture when he commented that he had seen a painting in Degass studio that was begun in cool greens and blues, only to see it changed into the key of oranges when he came back after some days. (The two different paintings have been slightly cropped, for comparisons sake.)

In the beginning of this series of articles, we asked if Degas could be an Impressionist, as his practice seemed contradictory to that of Monet and the others. Looking closely at Degass paintings, we can work out that he used mainly the Impressionists palette of chromatic colours of fractured light, like a rainbow. This is consistent with the Impressionist method. His focus on depicting light, if artificial, is Impressionistic. Likewise is his painting shadows with chromatic colours, instead of the tonalist use of umber, grey, or black.

So, a few points for Degas being an Impressionist, and a few points against. That is not very conclusive. Of course we can make an arbitrary choice, placing him in one camp or the other, but lets find out what he himself thought.

To make a long story short enough for this article, well remember that the academies had deemed classical art in the history painting genre to be what artists should paint. In literature, there emerged a movement in the 19th century called Realism/Naturalism. Their aim was to describe



contemporary people in all human situations. Many painters also became Realists, painting ordinary people in ordinary settings. As Degas said, before, I would have painted Susannah Bathing, and now I paint A Woman Taking A Bath. This circle of painters around Manet met at the Caf Guerbois and made up the Realist movement among painters. Later, they formed a society that were to become known as The Independents, who held their first joint exhibition in 1874, where Monet displayed his work Impression, Sunrise. The nickname impressionists, coined by a negative critic, stuck to the group, and most seem comfortable with it. Not Degas, who later said what a pity we allowed ourselves to be called Impressionists.

Degas regarded himself as a Realist, painting the reality of life, in the real colours of light.

Charlotte Herczfeld

Most of the pictures are courtesy of www.edgar-degas.org



REVIEW: Pan PastelsBy Charlotte Herczfeld

Pastels come in a great variety. Now we in Europe have access to the very versatile new PanPastel, which is exactly as it sounds: The softest pastel pigment in a pan that looks like eye shadow, or, to keep the similarity within the world of fine art, like some round and large watercolour pans. Each of these pans have approximately 40% more colour and 4-5 times more coverage than the average pastel stick. This soft pastel was invented so pastellists can use it as a fluid medium.

The PanPastels and the Sofft Tools are made by the American Colorfin company, and are designed by an artist, for artists. Go to the PanPastel site, and see all products, enjoy beautiful artwork by different artists, get good instructions and watch master pastellist give demonstrations in instructional videos, and much more, including a link to the tools site, and where to get the PanPastels in Europe.

To paint with the Pans you need the specially developed sponges and tools. The pores of the spongy material picks up pigment smoothly, and then deposit it in richly coloured layers on the painting surface. The same kind of sponge, or foam, is used for the little socks that go on the tips of the tools that look like plastic painting knifes. If you have ever painted oils with a painting knife, you will find this process very similar, and the strokes will be easier to control.

An interesting curiosity is that new ideas often have a history. In a book from 1757 called The handmaid to the arts by Robert Dossie, the author has a similar solution:

The carmine, ultramarine, or any other colour which may be too dear, or not had in sufficient quantity to form crayons, may be used by means of /a/ leather roll ... This roll is only a piece of shamoy (sic!) leather formed into a kind of long cone by rolling it in a spiral manner, and then twining thread tightly round it to keep it from unfolding. The leather must be so managed in the rolling as to form a point of the degree of bluntness required; or if it be too blunt it may be sharpened with a pen-knife. With the point of this roll breathed upon, the carmine etc. may be taken and laid on the painting in such touches as may be required, and the effect will be nearly the same as if the point of a crayon had been used.

Chamois has a texture similar to the Sofft tool microfiber sponges, a comparatively very large surface packed into a small area, so the pastellists of old could use it to their advantage. The Sofft sponges have many different shapes, giving you the full control over the marks they make.

The Pans are fully compatible with traditional pastel sticks that means you can use both in the same painting. Just like stick-paintings, PanPastel paintings have to be protected behind glass, and you can use fixative on them too, but the need is less as the dust adheres to the paper very well.



The set I tested is the beautiful 20 Color Painting Set. I normally paint with a larger palette of about 100 pastel sticks (including tints and shades), from which I pick the actual palette for the painting. I thought the limited number of pure pigment colours (12) would be a challenge, but together with black, white, two greys, and four earth tones, the wonderful colours are so well chosen you can easily mix them to produce the colours you need. If you have a little bit of knowledge of colour mixing, this set will definitely work for you.

A used and messy set like in this picture is absolutely no problem at all. It really is very easy to use a sponge or a paper towel to wipe off the dirt. To clean well used sponges and socks simply wash them with soap and water, and let them dry by themselves. The socks on the tools can be turned, so the dirty part is upside and the fresh other side becomes the surface you use. As you see, the tools have different shapes, for different kinds of strokes. The square tool is great for painting windows, for example.

The Pans can be screwed together like caps on bottles into stacks that have a very small footprint, for storage. When spread out for painting, they take up a bit of space on your desk or table.

When testing the PanPastels , I had four questions in mind:

1) How do they compare to other media?

2) Is there a catch, a drawback?

3) Is there a need for them?

4) Can they do anything better than ordinary pastels can?



Compared to other media

My immediate reaction was: they feel like dry watercolours, as they give such fluid marks. They are a pastel, but they perform differently because of the application with tools. They make either a broader and fuzzier stroke than pastel sticks, or a much more narrow sharp one if the sharp edge of a sponge is used. As I used so much white, I thought that I might use it up, but no, the coverage and colour intensity is so good that a pan will last very long. And every speck of pigment in the pan can be caught with the tools and painted with! Compared to watercolour, they allow for a much higher degree of control, and a better coverage, while retaining luminosity. Pans layers are definitely thinner than oil-paint applied with a knife, but can be built up to the same colour intensity of tints, but not the same impasto. From thin glazes, to colour-rich layers that cover very well the possibilities are endless.

Adjustments

The pastellist will discover that the tools need re-loading of pigment rather often, for a richly pigmented look. A pastel stick is a bit of dry paint held by the fingertips, so the whole load is already, as it were, at hand. Painters in other media will be used to re-loading. The Pans will perform more like a brush, and give a softer appearance, which is less energetic but very pleasing and fluidly beautiful. As the PanPastels have fewer tints than pastel sticks, more blending is needed, but on the other hand it is more easy to achieve half-steps than with traditional sticks. When applying a blended colour to a large area, some skill in blending is needed to produce the same colour for every loading of the tool. A pastellist isnt much used to cleaning tools and replacing worn out parts of tools, so some new habits will have to be formed. A good thing is that there is no need to wash the sponges immediately, as there is no part of the Pans that dry, and the tool will stay usable even if cleaning is forgotten for a while. Very good for lazy cleaners, like me.

Need, and special use

Many people love the velvety finish of a pastel painting, but cannot stand to get their hands dusty and dirt under their fingernails. The Pans painted with the tools, will keep your hands fairly clean. The sponges will not. A great feature of the Pans is that they appear less dry to the skin, so much that I felt the need to ask the manufacturer if there was a fatty ingredient in the formula. No, they replied, there is no fat, the Pans are just so silky to the touch.

There is really very little dust falling off a painting or released in the air. Compared to the waste from regular sticks, the Pans definitely stay on the paper a big plus for the Pans!

The tools and sponges can produce beautifully fluidly flowing strokes which look very painterly. This is perhaps the biggest difference to ordinary sticks, which just cant do it. It is exciting to be able to expand ones repertoire of strokes.



Subjective viewBefore painting exclusively with pastels, I used to paint oils with a painting knife, so I felt I

adapted fairly quickly to the Pans and the tools, and the need for blending. I loved how the sponges could fill an area with pigment very quickly and completely, but still leave a lively varied surface, which also could be brought to a high degree of smoothness if desired.

I painted three small paintings using only Pans, and the set of 20 colours. I was amazed at how versatile the set was, as Id chosen the motives to be very different from each other. I did feel a lack of sharp edges for the finishing touches, as the tools leave soft edges, but in the last painting I had figured out how to use the edges of the sponges to get clean sharp lines and edges. The Pans paint skies by themselves, almost effortlessly. They help create the illusion of distance very well, with soft and blurry edges of the tools.

I just loved how the skin on my hands didnt dry out, and the dust was as easy to wash off as stick-dust. After three paintings, I definitely need to wash the sponges and the socks, as they start to deposit grey mixed mud, and wiping the pigment off on a paper towel is not sufficient to clean them anymore. Two socks got some serious wear and tear, and will have to be replaced pretty soon.

I really love how the Pans and the tools perform!



ConclusionThe PanPastels and the Sofft tools are an excellent addition to the pastel artists

toolbox, as they can accomplish some things better and quicker, have unique stroke-marks, and a very good adherence to paper and significantly less dust. The Pans can be used for underpaintings, together with other pastels. They can be used exclusively to bring a painting to its finish, and also painted over a wet media underpainting. Just to mention a few options. A versatile pastel indeed, which will give your paintings a whole new and exciting look!

You can win this set (see picture below)! Be a member of PGE, and take part in the monthly challenge Get Dusty!



MEET THE ARTIST: Charlotte Herczfeld, SwedenThe winner of Get ReadyGet dusty content for September is Charlotte Herczfeld, Sweden. Her winning painting is on the first side of this newsletter. Charlotte Herczfeld, Sweden, has painted solely with pastels for only two years. She loves the immediacy and brilliant colours of the medium, and is devoted to take the pastel renaissance the world experiences to Europe, where it once begun. She is one of the founders of the Pastel Guild of Europe, and currently serves as its Chair.

You chose a ballerina to represent the theme Freedom, could you say a bit more about your thoughts behind this choice? Unconsciously, Im sure I was inspired by writing the article on Degas. Consciously, I gave it some deep thought, as there are so many things that may represent freedom. I was drawn to the sense, the physical experience, of freedom. The ballerina seemingly floating on air is my try to depict the heady exuberant feeling. At the same time, that freedom is very hard won, through the greatest of disciplinesballerinas are definitely not dainty, but well muscled elite athletes. I really like the paradox, as many deep truths lies in paradoxes, that skill and control gives freedom. It is the same for a realist painter. Only after many years of rigorous training do you get the skills needed the freedom for making the very difficult seem effortless. It is about life, really, and how we train ourselves to be humans, which is no mean feat.

Can you tell us a bit about how you came to be an artist? Im so called self-educated. That really only means that Ive chosen to not learn modernist

and post-modernist art at university level. My father was an artist, so I got a very good start at home, and painted my first oil when I was around seven or eight years old. I didnt take my art seriously until later, though, as I never got to possess as good a draftsmanship as my father. I was enticed by colour, not line. But art was always there, as a hobby, and in my thirties I studied Art History at Stockholm University, delighting in the old masters. I was more interested in their methods than in names and dates, and read everything I could find on how to paint, and tried it out. Self-taught, means that I had the drive to seek out the knowledge, and the tutoring. These days, with the internet and all, you can get yourself the equivalent of very high level education, with some effort and dedication. Ive studied for several artists, and taken many classes, and workshops. The impressionistic method of full-colour seeing has made the greatest impact on me, and I spent some considerable time in California to learn it from a master painter.



What made you choose pastels as your main medium?

Id acquired a full set over the years, and dabbled a bit with them, often making preliminary studies for oils. Then I got a problem with my neck and wrists, and had to take a pause from painting in oils, but I found that I had no pain when painting in pastels. What started as a necessity, grew to be a great love! When I found the perfect papers for the method I use, I didnt look back. No other medium is as immediate as holding a stick of rich pigments between your fingers and painting! There is no drying time to test my patience, and the pigments are already dry so they wont change appearance, ever. It is one of the most beautiful and versatile mediums Ive tried. Im surprised it has fallen out of use for finished works, when it is so perfect for just that. Ive recently returned a bit to oils, but pastels will definitely stay my main medium.

What are your plans for the future? For myself, I plan to get better and better at painting, Im really just a student, and hope I will

be for the rest of my life, as curiosity and willingness to life-long learning has been the mark of the great masters of old. Ill continue to build on my career as an artist, and have many more exhibitions. That kind of thing, the business part of painting for a living as well as pleasure.

Sharing, community, mutual help and growth, is very important to me. No artist is an island. Im devoting myself to the PGE, as we few pastellists in Europe need it for learning and for expressing ourselves in various ways. We, the board, work to make this start of the society into an excellent resource and meeting place. It will take some time, naturally, to develop this seed into a big tree. The journey is well worth it. So Im back to the Freedom painting: anything worth wile will take effort.



DEMO: Black CatBy Gary Regnier

Here is a black cat pastel pencils on Royal Sovereign card. I use Faber-Castell, Carbothello, Derwent, Rowney and Gioconda pastel pencils and an integrated colour chart can be downloaded from my website. I have been painting in pastels seriously for just over 2 years now and often change and vary my methods as I try new materials and subjects. This method for rendering animals seems to have stuck with me though and I hope there may be a few useful things you can use yourself.

For the last 6 months or so I have stopped printing references and instead I produce a bunch of photos on a DVD slideshow disk that I play through an old portable TV. This not only saves me a small fortune in ink but also allows me to produce enlargements and useful variations. I will usually have one master reference, a lighter and darker version and a posterised version. This helps with simplifying and also seeing into shadows. I use a tablet and pen to produce my initial drawings which will show the basic outline and the main boundaries of change. An obvious advantage of working this way is that I can print off the drawing at any size and transfer to my paper. Once I have the drawing down I aim to establish the darkest and lightest areas, decide where the light is coming from and its colour. I then try to establish my mid tone and introduce some strong colours which will be modified later with whatever the local colour will be. I use this same method for portraits of people too.

The first step has given me my warm and cool sides, the lightest parts are within the ears and the forehead will be my mid tone. For now I feel that under the chin will need to be my darkest area to project the face. The paper colour is not important to the finished painting but was chosen as a mid tone to help keep everything dark enough to start with. My plan was to lighten the background later to help make the subject look more black.

I am working in short strokes in the fur directions rather than blocking in first as this gives me the chance to change colours more often and decide what I find important and what I will leave out. I will be blocking in more towards the end when I tie all the areas together. At this stage I would usually start to put some detail into the eyes but the reference I had was pretty awful and the eyes



very light and flat. So for now I have lightly put them in to see if I like their look. I have already decided I need to change them later to something warmer.

In the next stage I have started adding darker colours and black. I also start blending which smoothes everything out and starts to fill the paper tooth to allow much finer lines and detail to be added. If I find an area becomes too dusty and overworked I use a blending stump, cotton bud or a brush to remove some pastel whilst still working in the fur direction. It is really a balancing act now between retaining the early colours and keeping them subtle enough to give a fairly natural finish.

Continuing in the same way I keep building and adjusting and start to complete the ears.

At this point I have decided I am happy that things are balancing out ok so I add a lighter background. I have introduced a little yellow ochre to the warm side of the nose which I will use here and there on the light side of the face at the finish. Once I have completed the rest of the subject I will go over the whole piece with dark browns, blues, greys and black and use the pencils to blend everything together.



In the finished piece after blending I have changed the eyes to a softer and warmer look. I have added more of the yellow to suggest some warm light and a few lighter hairs here and there.

See more of Gary's work at gmrfineart.com



COMPETITIONSartKudos (all media)http://www.artkudos.com/callforentries.html

The Pastel 100 by Pastel Journal magazine(pastel only)http://www.artistsnetwork.com/pasteljournalcompetition/

The International Artist magazine(all media)http://www.international-artist.com/splash.aspx

Jack Richeson & Cohttp://www.richeson75.com/callforentries.html

EXHIBITIONSOn the 29th of October the Pastel Society of Malta have the opening of the third annual

exhibition of the society which is going to take place at Palazzo De La Salle in Republic Street in Valletta, Malta.

PASTEL WORKSHOPS

Margaret Evans, PSA

www.shinafoot.co.uk/

Colleen K. Howe, PSA, AWA

www.colleenhowe.com

October 13-24, France

Maggie Price, PSA

www.maggiepriceart.com

2009 Aug23-Sep 2, Scotland

2010 Oct1-11, Juzcar, Spain

William Hosner Fine Art

www.williamhosner.com

in 2010, Madrid, Spain

in 2010, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Windswept studios

www.slikamilina.ca

www.windsweptstudios.com/

Oct 5-14, Korula, Croatia


2009 The Pastel Guild of Europe, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.The Pastel Guild of Europe website: pastelguild.euSend your feedback to [email protected]

EDITORIAL SCRIBBLEGET READY...GET DUSTYARTIST LOOKING AT: The colourful world of Degas DrawingUnderpaintingPaintingFinishing

REVIEW: Pan PastelsCompared to other mediaAdjustmentsNeed, and special useSubjective viewConclusion

MEET THE ARTIST: Charlotte Herczfeld, SwedenDEMO: Black CatCOMPETITIONSEXHIBITIONSPASTEL WORKSHOPS

Documents

Pastel Scribbler Sep09