Whoa, Nicole!

Can you get a data recovery service to mine the memory in your PC to at least recover any pages that may be stored in there?
What about customer service at Blogger?
What about your Norton Go Back? (Probably not?)
Wish I had the expertise to help more, but those pages are out there somewhere. Maybe Google cache?
Well, get someone with a clear head to helt you trouble-shoot this problem.
Cheers, and good luck!

Degas Pastel

The Artist's Cousin, 1873
Edgar Degas

This wonderful portrait shows some of Degas' process and technique with pastels. I couldn't resist sharing it with you.

The Pastel Palette

Since the Diana Ponting lessons are going fast and furious over at Wet Canvas, I thought I might add some pastel trivia and tips, history and information to keep the enthusiasm up for pastels.
Many of my blog chums around the net have taken up the subject af pastel this month, and I think quite spontaneously.
Yesterday, we looked at the Pastel General, Edgar Degas. I intend to also have a look at a few other luminaries from the past and also the present who work with pastel. If all goes well, we'll peek in on a few of my pastel chums.
This post will be in two parts: 1. (Today) A simple palette box system, 2. (Tomorrow) A brief and simple look at pastel brands and types. I may add a third on how to get outside with them, as that seems to be a big area of 0f interest.

Since I am not in my big studio during my remodel, I am working in the house with my plein air kit. I make my kits from shallow cigar boxes. This one is a PADRON (Nicaraguan, Hand Made) cigar box: 6.5" x 11.25" x 1.75". The shallow depth allows for security of the sticks, and I find that wood's gentle touch is the kindest to my pastels. I notice that few cigar shops actually sell their empty cigar boxes, but those kind ones that do, get my return business. Cardboard is also gentle; plastic transfers too much shock, IMO. For extended trips (air travel), I add a sheet of thin foam bought at an upholstery shop, or scrounged from other places.
Further, I have constructed a tray out of foam core, with foam core dividers glued in place with Elmer's (children's) glue. A ribbon allows me to get the top tray out. When I do go (rarely) out the door, I put a couple of extra long rubber bands around the box.
The little wooden trays are gathered from second hand stores where one may find dried fruit trays, and from tobacconists. They become my working palette.
It is important to get the pastel sticks out of their original boxes, where they seem to be organized randomly, and into something that you can organize and work with. Don't worry about breaking them. They will all be broken eventually. I will show you how to fix that later.
It is a great help to take the paper off, as well. Some artists, like the venerable Daniel Greene, I think, carefully break each one of their multi-thousand dollar full set of Senellier pastels in two. They dutifully store away the halves to use one for painting, and the other for a reference from which they may match the little stub and then be able to re-order individual sticks.
Now, I will gladly do anything that DG does, as he is THE MAN, and a master of pastels. If he enters the studio from the right, I will enter the studio from the right.
But, you are blessed, dear reader, with the fact that you are beginning your pastel life in the digital era. Take a picture of your beautiful new box of expensive pastels. Then, take it apart, and organize it in with the others. Your $250 box of 100 pastels will be absorbed into the vast whole of your palette, and you will be left in shock at how few they actually appear to be. You will shed a tear.
Also, be aware that most art stores have a few color charts relating to the brands of pastels that they sell. And, for the picky, like me, one can get hand made charts (true representations, not ink!) for most brands from Dakota Pastels.

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

La Chanteuse Verte, 1884
The Green Singer
Pastel
Edgar Degas

As often happens, I find that the Wikipedia entry for Degas is the best overview I've read.
His art was produced with planning and slow deliberation. He seems quite the opposite of van Gogh, who worked (although with direction and forethought) very quickly.
Degas' freshness of color I attribute to his masterful use of the pastel medium. Many aren't aware that he worked in pastel, given the popularity of oil paint among the Impressionists. As a matter of fact, Degas was very progressive in his use of media. He painted in oil and pastel, was a sculptor, a printmaker, and was an early practitioner of photography.
Pastel, however, is the hallmark media of Degas' legacy. He is considered to be the greatest figure in pastel's pantheon of artists, given his advancement of the medium at an historical turning point in art history.
A born Parisienne, Degas studied art in France, but also made a pilgrimage to Italy for study in classical principles of art. He is also noted for having traveled to New Orleans, in the U.S.
Additionally, the great artist lived 83 years, and never married. It is sad to read of his eyesight degeneration, and to imagine how he was supposed to have wandered, near his death, aimlessly on the streets of Paris.
Degas was part of a movement of artists who spanned the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, and whose vision would replace allegory and morality in artistic subject, with modernist realism and what has been described as artistic "looking" at man.
Towards the latter part of his long career, he did loosen up his sense of detail, and began to value the abstract qualities of his paintings a little more. He was a studio artist, preferring to work from studies and memory.
Degas had his fair share of difficulty dealing with his public. "Why do you paint women so ugly, Monsieur Degas?" he was once asked by a hostess. "Parce que la femme en general est laide, madame, " came the reply. "Because, madam, women in general are ugly."
And to print this on International Women's Day! He had his uncouth way of acting, as many life-long bachelors do. In point of fact, his female nudes and figures did not suffer from sympathy or idealization. To his credit, he created new and fresh figurative works that respect the actual forms, presence and gestures of mankind. And he did it in a colorist fashion, as the incredible The Green Singer, demonstrates.
I like the idea that he did not destroy the past, in the so-called avant-garde way, but rather built upon it.
I recommend Expo-Degas for an online collection of his art.
I very much recommend the following article by Robert Hughes, for a highly opinionated criticism of the artist's life and work.
The only book I own about the paragon of pastel is: Degas by Himself, Richard Kendall. Does anyone out there recommend a good monograph of Degas?

Pastel History

High Key Green Trees
14" x 10"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
$1,000

Let's have a short look at a few great pastellists in history. I want to feature Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Rosalba Carriera for starters.
Then, I'd like to showcase some of the current great artists who use pastels. Daniel Greene and Wolf Kahn come to mind. If all goes well, I will introduce you to some of my pastel chums locally.
We can also get into the dissection of what goes into these little sticks of pigment, and by the time we're done, who knows? I may have taken you all down to my basement and we can make some home-made pastels according to my super-secret and mysterious recipe.
Tomorrow: Degas
Post script: I was just over at Making a Mark, and Katherine has posted an opportunity for you to participate online in a pastel class by the highly accomplished Dianna Ponting. Also, I will be posting on 100 Paintings - Colorist Italian Landscapes about all things pastel and Italy.

Pastel

The sound of harps playing in the background; a little bell ringing. Those sounds accompany the conversion of one more soul to the pastel medium.
Okay, okay. I'm making too big a deal of it. We pastellists are sure "into" our little misunderstood medium. I won't bore you right now with the whole French-Revolution-and-what-it-did-to-the -pastel-medium story.
Mrs. Snowy has purchased a box of the little addictive sticks. Pastels, I mean!
Here is a link to a nice, short summary of what the pastel medium is. Go here to get another peek at my own pastel palette. The first view is free, kid...

Synchronicity

The following comment appeared the other day relating to an old, old post. Go see The Colorspeaker here. It is a small world, and an even smaller cyber world!

"hi Casey, I am "the Colospeaker,"
AKA, Julianne Richards. Funnily enough, I never saw your generous comment until a friend of mine told me about it, but just this past weekend, i was admiring your work, and then today my friend told me your name and i realized you were the same artist i had been looking at all weekend! What a coincidence! If there is such a thing... thank you so much, I will put a link to your site on my blog. Happy painting, write anytime.
the Colorspeaker"

Little things like this keep one going. I am trying to get three more Italian Landscapes to the photog., and put together a couple packets. One for the local gallery and one for the PSA slide registry. Meanwhile, the whole family has been suffering from the flu.
Never a dull moment, the artist's life...

Post Day at 100 Paintings

La Ca, Italy Casey Klahn

This is the finished work from my La Ca sketch. Visit it at http://www.100italianpaintings.blogspot.com.

Olympic Mountains

Violet Woods
6.25" x 9.2"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
Sold

The Olympic National Park is part of my DNA. It's easier to name the trails I haven't hiked there, than the long list of those I have. My climbing tick list is also full of memories.
This image was done from memory, based on the way the Quinault Ridge (Kwi-nawlt) lies at an acute angle, yet still supports behemoth cedar, fir and spruce trees. The largest on the planet, in fact.
Great rain forests (temperate jungles) form multi-canopy overhead cover. When I lived there, my palette was mostly grays. Now, I suffer in the sunny inland region of Washington State. But my palette has come alive!

Your Opinion, Please

How do you, my daily readers, feel about the new white background, versus the old blue-gray one?
I know that the old color was sort of a signature part of my layout and look. The argument for the new white bg is that it facilitates the header image, which blogger simply won't justify to center.
Any geeks out there with a suggestion on that issue?
Look here tomorrow for my weekend Colorist Landscape, and don't forget to see my other blog for my 100 paintings of Italy posting.

Let's Try a New Look

The old saying goes,"if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
Without regard for that sage advice, I wanted to at least try an image on my header. I have monkeyed around with different images, especially a blue palette tray. Because blogger works for the new picture in some other templates, I tried them out. The confines were too, well, confining.
So, I feel like the page can breath better with this classic template. But, to overcome the little picture creep on the right side, I had to re-size the header image, and go with a white background.
We'll have to see how this look "feels". I will miss the blue background, for now. I did like a neutral tone background to make images look brighter.
So, enjoy the red palette tray and the white background.

Process Sketch - Italy

Bell Tower Process Sketch
Casey Klahn

Since I missed the Wolf Kahn pastel workshop in Manhattan, I decided to "channel" him through this sketch. He makes these squiggly lines with unpredictable colors, you see. The end result, though, is a rather built up set of layers, and an expressionist landscape that pleases the eye.
In fact, I have never done one like this, and when I finished it, I said: "How did I do that? It looks like a Wolf Kahn!" I guess it goes to the "seeing" operation. If you look hard enough, and long enough at art that you like, it will find its way down your arm and out your hand, eventually.
I couldn't be happier.
Another factor is the sketch paper. I'm used to working on (expensive) Wallis Museum stock, or Sennelier La Carte, both of which are sanded heavy stock. The regular laid paper allows the sketchy look.
The big difference between a WK and my own pastels (besides about $2,000) is that he is a little more interested in the scene, or nature, than I. He uses pastels as a drawing tool, and I make a finished painting. Indeed, I visualize WK's Oil Paintings when I make my Colorist American Landscapes.
I wrote somewhere in a comment (probably Tracy Helgeson's blog) that I made the effort to go see Kahn's art at the Ameringer-Yohe in New York, while I was in transit to Italy last summer.
I was rewarded with a ring bound catalog of their last Wolf Kahn pastel show. And, I had to suffer through the assistant (not the main staff person, who was top notch) describing the artist's layer build-up as probably done in oil pastel. (steam coming from my ears, here)
Back to my drawing. I also played a lot with the colors, by building up as many layers as the cheap paper would take. I was thinking of van Gogh's Auvers church, and looking for a complex of colors for the main building and tower. I was thinking of his letter where he describes the pink road in his painting.

R.I.P.

Vincent was denied a church funeral because of his suicide. Those were the days when it was considered a sin.
VVG had plenty of that. Sin.
His mother wished him dead well before his actual demise, and his father disowned him.
In the list of shared background that I have with VVG, there is the matter that I have my BA in the Bible and theology. One of the things in the van Gogh story that has been bugging me is the art critics who write the histories of the old boy have him renouncing his Christian faith.
I find no evidence of that. Yes, he most definitely strayed "off the reservation", and had unkind things to say about the church. He cohabits with, and consorts with, prostitutes. Then again, Hosea the prophet (remember, he has a whole book of the Bible) was married to one of those, you may remember.
But I see no renunciation of Christ. In fact, I see evidence to the contrary. Unlike myself, the old boy was a Calvinist. Strictly speaking, these guys think that one is "Once Saved, Always Saved". Which means, once you have been compelled, via Holy Election, to accept Christ, you will not stray, in spite of any evidence to the contrary. For you non-theologically minded, let's put it this way: if you were VG's father, a Calvinist minister, you would believe in the secure salvation of Vincent, no matter what he did after accepting Christ.
His parent's ungracious behavior towards him was understandable, in sociological terms. The first people you lose when you leave behind your sanity are your family. Turns out, more tragically, that many of Vincent's immediate family had dementia in their final days, due to the ravages of syphilis.
Of course, van Gogh is a father of Modernism. Yes, he exalted self, art, and nature. Certainly these things may crowd out the heart's room for God. I see nothing in that, however, to irrevocably overcome his place in the eternal. God knows, not I.
For the irreligious this may be a painful and seemingly unnecessary post. But I don't know how, without bald redaction, one can study the artist van Gogh without his faith, or art history (western) without Christ. It would seem to be impossible.
Certainly, it needs to be said, that the trend among VG's historians to strip him of his salvation is probably ill-informed, at best. I don't think I would be too surprised, standing on the other side, that I should meet the great artist, Vincent van Gogh.

It appears that others have covered this same ground, and agree with my thesis.
See:
This article by Cliff Edwards on VG's faith.
Also:
"Few images in modern art have so captured the attention of the public as Van Gogh's Starry Night, a painting that reveals all the light and glory hidden in an ordinary evening sky. In this very readable study of Van Gogh, essentially a spiritual biography, Kathleen Erickson explores the intense spirituality of the painter, from his early religious training and evangelical missionary work to the crisis that occurred when the church rejected his more radical way of following Christ. Erickson argues (against many Van Gogh scholars) that the artist's mature work reflects not a rejection of Christ so much as a rejection of a dogmatic church, seeing instead in the famous images of his art a profound connection to Christian symbols. Throughout, she helps us to discover the source of the power in Van Gogh's stars and sunflowers." --Doug Thorpe in this review of At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent van Gogh.
From Publisher's Weekly:
"Erickson's account of the spiritual dimensions of van Gogh's work is an important corrective to two widespread assumptions: first, that his background was theologically Calvinist; second, that he abandoned religion when he began his professional career as an artist. Drawing extensively on van Gogh's correspondence, Erickson argues convincingly that the so-called Groningen school?(sic) more Arminian than Calvinist?was the foundation for van Gogh's religious outlook and that his abandonment of institutional Christianity (precipitated by disillusionment with his uncle and theological mentor, Johannes Paulus Stricker) was not so much an abandonment of religion as a move to synthesize Christianity and modernity via mysticism. Her discussion of van Gogh's late work is particularly compelling in this regard. Erickson's diagnostic discussion of van Gogh's mental illness is intriguing, though such extended discussion of whether he was epileptic, bipolar, schizophrenic or a combination is more of a distraction than a contribution to artistic or religious appreciation of his work. This work is a lucid and accessible contribution to understanding the religious character of van Gogh's artistic vision."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. (Pasted from Amazon)
I won't argue the Arminian vs. Calvinist parts, here.

Note: now I still need to post regarding the lessons I learned by "seeing" VG's art, and producing a work after him.

Van Gogh Work Finished

Passing Around the Corner
Pastel
Casey Klahn
$100, Buy it Now
100italianpaintings
or post a comment to purchase
Plus tax and shipping where needed

Here is the final painting for my van Gogh project.
I backed off of the desire to "be" VG, and decided to use my own style, plus influences.
Tomorrow we'll put the apparition back in his resting place, beside Theo. With summary. Or, is that eulogy?
Do hop on over to my new blog, 100 Paintings-Colorist Italian Landscapes.
I will be posting a new pastel painting of Italy every 100 hours , with a colorist twist. When I get fully up, I will be putting them up for auction, with a 100 hour duration for bidding. Early viewers will be offered the flat $100 rate, plus tax & shipping.
After the one hundredth painting, I will cease making Italian landscape miniatures.

Dear Lorie

More Love Every Year,
KC

My Inspiration for Colors

The Church at Auvers, 1890

"I have a larger picture of the village church-an effect in which the building appears to be violet-hued against a sky of simple deep blue color, pure cobalt; the stained-glass windows appear as ultramarine blotches, the roof is violet and partly orange. In the foreground some green plants in bloom, and sand with the pink flow of sunshine in it. And once again it is nearly the same thing as the studies I did in Neunen of the old tower and the cemetery, only it is probably that now the color is more expressive, more sumptuous." van Gogh to his sister Wil.

The Old Cemetery Tower at Neunen, 1885
van Gogh

I am indebted to Wikipedia's entry about this image, featuring the letter and the two images that VG is writing about. Also, Katherine Tyrrell brought this church painting to my attention as a possibility for color ideas for my own The Old Man Rounds the Corner pastel.
Remember that you can review VG's letters here, and his paintings here.

Now, I want to list my observations about the church at Auvers by van Gogh:

• As always, VVG describes his paintings more by the color composition than by any other descriptors.
• He has noted two paintings that center and focus on a tall structure. I learned to do this in Italy to succeed in handling complex architectural subjects.
• He eschews perspective by minimizing aerial effects (lighter, less yellow as an object recedes to the background); rather he wants to concern himself with full intensity of color as much as possible.
• I feel that separating compliments, such as orange and blue, or violet and yellow by some intermediate colors or objects, still allows these combinations to pop. Similarity in value helps.
• Character in the structure (is it similar to a person?) is provided by loose rendering, crooked lines, and amorphous masses.
• He uses shadows here, which is less common for him. That's good since I don't use them much, but need to in my painting.
  

Going forward, I will have to decide how I feel about my picture, with it's competing elements. The bell tower is not the sole architectural element; the man competes for attention. They both compliment one another as far as symbolic meaning are concerned.
Is the "old world" going around the corner? Is the church relevant to today? What about Italy? What is it's place in modernity? Is my painting too dear, sympathetic or nostalgic? Do those feelings have any place in art, today?
I actually have completed the small sized painting of the old man and bell tower. It, along with 3 or 4 works are ready to be posted, once the photos are produced. But, this smaller one is part of my Colorist Italian Landscapes; 100 Paintings project. I wish to create a bigger one for my VG project.
I am intrigued by Katherine's assumption of the old man's marks and tools. But, I guess I have enough on my plate for now, and will have to be satisfied with discovering his color process in my painting.

Facade in Riva Del Garda

Facade in Riva Del Garda
5" x 4.3"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
100 Paintings, Colorist Italian Landscapes
$100

It looks like it's been at least 100 hours since I posted my last Italian Landscape. So far, I have been keeping ahead of my schedule (pats self on back) by having the little artworks finished. I'd better hurry up and get those digital images made, so I can keep up with the posting!
Lake Garda is the largest lake in Italy, in the extreme north and in the foothills of the Alps. Go here for press mentioning this artist and the activities I was honored to participate in at Lake Garda. Here is the photo.
See the webcams here. Looks quite rainy today.

Saturday Colorist Landscape

Tangled Blue Branches
14" x 10"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
NFS

Italian Doorway

Italian Doorway

4.75" x 4.5"
Original Pastel
Colorist Italian Landscape
Casey Klahn
$100 SOLD
The first Colorist Italian Landscape will be in the collection of Nicole Caulfield

Offered to my patrons at The Colorist, without bid, while I am still tinkering on my new blog. Postage and tax, where needed, will be added.

Coffee With Van Gogh

"Are you getting my best side, Vincent?"
"Ya, Ya," says the old keener. He hatches here, he measures with his pencil and finger in the air; squinting with one eye.
I sip my coffee, made American style. Ahh, life is good...