Intuition Revisited

Abstract Reds Over Blues
20" x 12"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
Private Collection

This is a re-post of a favorite essay.


Under the tutelage of Diane Townsend, I painted this abstract work. It has some elements of color field painting, like Mark Rothko, and extensive gestural elements. The gestural nature is in keeping with the drawing roots of the pastel medium. I like the way the paper's surface is evident, and yet the color blending, and heavily worked nature of the piece makes it work as a painting for me.

The choices that a child makes are very intuitive


Let's talk a little bit about intuitive choices in fine art. The choices that a child makes are very intuitive, because their knowledge base is limited. The hands start moving, and the limitations are the length of their little arms, and the characteristics of the tools. They are mostly trying these tools out for the very first time.

A great deal is made of technique in art. The pastel medium is no exception. In fact, technical skill is probably too emphasized in this medium. It's supposed to be hard, you see. And, admittedly, there is much to know (much that I do not know!). Sometimes beginning steps are not rewarded very well by the outcomes.

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things," Edgar Degas



So, intuition! First sketches with bold gestural marks always work better for me than deliberate and measured work. The thing is to have years and years of drawing from memory in one's back pocket, and then the quick marks made on the paper will seem intentional. I don't subscribe to the subtle and tentative working that is often required of detailed realistic work.

The same goes for compositional choices. It is not easy to describe, but I think that studying good composition is necessary, and then ought to be put out of one's mind. If you can internalize compositional knowledge, it will come out naturally as you draw. The best thing I can say is: "try it".

The pastel medium is "made to order" for the artist who wants to favor intuitive creation


The ability to critique one's own art becomes more important when you want to be an intuition-driven artist. Did this one really turn out to have the best composition? Color Choices? Does it have too much to say for one painting? Ask these questions of yourself.

Wolf Kahn has a chair that he sits in and ruminates over his finished art. Most artists do take some time and distance away from their works to try and get an objective perspective on their own creations. It's challenging.

The pastel medium is "made to order" for the artist who wants to favor intuitive creation. It is a direct, and rewarding tool. It's interesting to consider that in the book, Wolf Kahn's Pastels, the great colorist chose to make the text a collection of essays on artistic process. A natural fit, I think.

Bits

Jennifer Phillips - Daily Encounters With My Paint Brush

Here is a post with little bits of new things that I encountered at the Bellevue Fair last weekend. Since it is paramount that I catch up on sleep, and get reorganized here at the studio, I'll give you the random thoughts now, and coherent "lessons" later.

In the category of Art Blogs in Washington State, at the fair I was happy to meet Jennifer Phillips of Seattle who blogs here. Her tonal landscapes are a breath of fresh air. They present a living scape of trees and field's edges where you'd like to be. Beautiful works.

Also met was Deborah Burns, who blogs for art retailer Daniel Smith, of Seattle. Nothing beats a visit to this large box retailer, especially for a huge selection of paper and a fine selection of pastels. I give them kudos for their drawing department and their workshop program. Their popular catalog is a resource of art materials instruction that I have benefited from many times, and their website has much of this instructional content as well. See the new blog here, although Deborah informs me that it is in beta stage, and that she will be transferring the blog to a private server that is not blogspot. Deborah is a former store manager at DS, and an arts promoter extraordinaire in the Seattle area.

Next: Lessons learned from Michael Monroe at the ArtsFair. And, I plan to give some linkage to the pastelists who show at the fair.

New Pastel Blog!

Announcing Pastel at PastelsBlog.Blogspot.com!

Because my tags are top-weighted with the subject of the pastel medium, I felt the need to step this subject out into it's own blog. What's more, there seems to be a demand unmet by the current blog world. I am by no means the leading authority on the medium of pastel, but I am willing to open up a venue like this to cover this popular and growing artist's tool.

Now that The Colorist is close to 1 year old, I want to continue to narrow and define it's direction. This blog is more about process and art than it is about tools and techniques, and so I am splitting out the vast world of Pastels as a stand-alone blog.

So, please continue here for my art process story, the broader world of fine art, and essentially a manifesto* on New School Color. And, for an exciting and growing discussion of all things pastel, please go to Pastel, at http://www.pastelsblog.blogspot.com.

*Manifesto: in art a public declaration or exposition in print of the theories and directions of a movement. The manifestos issued by various individual artists or groups of artists, in the first half of the twentieth century served to reveal their motivations and raisons d‚etre and stimulated support for or reactions against them.

Moleskine Pastel Sketching

Above Kimball Junction

8.25'" x 10"
Pastel Sketch in Moleskine Book
August 6th, 2007
Casey Klahn

One can sketch with pastels, and it is very good fun. This image is done on sight, from the back of the WalMart parking lot near Park City, Utah. Probably the most beautiful WalMart parking lot view anywhere. If I remember correctly, you can turn 90 degrees to the right from this scene, and you will be looking at the monumental Olympic Ski Jump, from the 2002 Winter Olympics. Follow the highway to the right, and you are on the Tenth Mountain Division Memorial Highway (Highway 224), which honors the storied unit that my late father served in during WW II.

It helps to have meaning and context, I think, to realist art. Sort of "fills it out," in my opinion.

The sketch itself is something of a mess, which is the best start for many good pastels that will be finished later. As long one gets the composition of lines and masses looking like he wants, and a few color notes established, then he's good to go. And, I'll give myself points for being loose, goose.

Before I leave the story of this drawing, locals to Park City will wonder which body of water I must have seen from the Kimball Junction location. None, of course. I just wanted to establish a unified base of blue-violet in the middle ground here. Artist's prerogative, you know. If I ever finish this one, I'll probably go ahead and stick a lake in there, and change the title of the piece.

Of special interest to me is the materials used for this outing. The pastel sets included the Basic Values Set from Terry Ludwig Pastels, which happens to be way overkill for an on sight day of sketching, in my own opinion. I prefer a smallish set, which I may post about in the future.

The sketch book is the famous "Moleskine" of Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac fame. Those are two literary giants whose footprints I have crossed over this past year during my art travels. They are leather bound, for those who value permanency in their books, and they lay flat.

The Squidoo Lens on this spiffy little leather-bound sketchbook's form of biblophilia is:
Moleskinerie.com

My Moleskine

Artist's Tape, Moleskine and Pencil

Sketch Box, Moleskine & Mouse

A Moleskine owned by

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Notebook No. 53, June-September 1912,
9 x 13.5 cm
kept in the Musée
National Picasso of Paris

The sketchbook of
Vincent van Gogh (1888–1890)
Kept in the Van Gogh
Museum of Amsterdam

Moleskine Sketch books are the grail of bibliophiles, such as myself. I will post the few sketches that I do, warts and all, as I create them.

Making Pastels - Continued

White Bunkhouse

8.75" x 9.5"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Many, if not most, of the colors in this pastel work are done with my home-made pastels. The blue-grays, one of the oranges, some of the blues, and the grays are my own made-by-hand pastel sticks.

Yesterday, we gathered our tools, and I promised to show you how to make pastels with no expensive purchases, just to get you started. We are going to make a stick from your easel tailings (dust that fell off of your paintings in production). Then, we'll just briefly touch on repairing broken sticks, and then we'll talk about making your own authentic colors.

The left over dust from your easel can be segregated at time of gathering to be mostly red, green or whatever. Or, if you just mix them all together, you will get a beautiful gray result. Pour out that jar of tailings onto your smooth-surface work area. Best to have your latex or vinyl gloves and dust mask on, as pigment can be harmful to one's health. Simple precautions should suffice.


We won't need the Gum Trag. or other bodies because your substance already has the manufacturer's binder and body. We're taking our first, easy steps, here.


Put a paper towel around that spray bottle with a rubber band, so that you can change it out for the next color that you want to mix cleanly. Make a mashed potato-like pile (or a mini volcano, if you will) and spray water into your pigment.
Pastel is a paste, so think pancake batter for consistency.


Roll the paste in your hand until you achieve a stick. If it's too wet, dab it with a paper towel. If it has cracks, then add a little water at a time until you get it like I show above. I take the extra effort of forming it up against a right angle of glass that I have taped to my glass surface in order to make it square. Many reasons support the square model, but I do it mainly to differentiate my sticks from most store-bought ones. I make them big.


The next few steps will be without photos, but you'll be fine. It's a bear trying to not muck on one's brand new Nikon Camera while making these messy pastels! Also, the next steps are now requiring you to have a supply of white pigment. The photo above shows Whiting, which is a body for making one's own colors, and not the same as white pigment, which I show down below. I bought mine at Daniel Smith, but several suppliers exist. I guess I went with DS because I could visit the retail store in Seattle to hand pick my materials.

1. Split your big stick into roughly two equal parts.
2. Pour out white pigment on your surface equal to the size of your original pile of pigment.
3. Combine the two and spray with a little water. Roll til you get the right consistency, adding or subtracting water as needed.
4. Keep following the same regimen of halving each stick and adding white until you get to the last one which will be roughly the size of your first "pure" color stick. Now you have a set of one hue in lightening tints. Perhaps about five or six in all.
5. Stop here for now, or decide to make your tones or shades of dark. If you wish to continue, clean your surface completely with glass cleaner, and change out the towel on your spray bottle. Wash, or change your gloves.
6. Get out the carbon or lamp black and start over. The blacks come in jars, typically. Of course, a grayer color of each hue may be achieved by mixing hues in the classic painting methods. Another good way to do some minor color mixing is to add liquid pigment, which I also use for underpainting.

Createx Liquid Pigment

The drying process takes days. Three or more in marine climates (Western Washington, England, etc.) and about three where I live in Eastern Washington (almost out of the marine zone, dryish climate). I took over an old food dehydrator that we had for the purpose, which I'm still in the doghouse with my spouse about ;) You can still test the color even when it's wet, though.


Now that we have done some incredible grays, we can clean up and grab that broken yellow remains, and disperse it as a pile of dust, add water, and roll into a paste. Dry, and there's your long lost buddy!


Now, go here for the super-secret, never before revealed and extra-classified formula for making your own custom colors. I owe Paul de Marrais a debt of gratitude for his openness in revealing this "state" secret. It is, hands down, the most workable and simple formula for starting your exploration into pastel making.


Are you ready for it? 2/3rds Calcium Carbonate (Whiting) to 1/3rd French Talc, and make a paste. SSSHHHHH! Now eat the formula! No! Not the paste, the note! At this point, you'll want to but some dry pigment. I recommend French Ultramarine for starters.


As de Marrias explains, the task is now to take your formula paste and mix it with the pigment, in much the same way that I have taught you to add the white or black. The impact on the color of the pigment is minimal, and you will have a very soft pastel as a result. I have experimented with going half the magic formula, half French Ultramarine pigment, and also with going 2/3rds the blue, and 1/3rd the "body". Both work very well. My next move will be to try to "channel" Henri Roche, and make an almost all pigment blue stick.


Did you notice that we haven't touched the Gum Tragacanth, yet? Keep that bag shut, sports fans. It turns out that many pigments have enough cohesive qualities that the binder isn't needed at all. If you so desire, you may want to experiment with the binder to make harder sticks, which are good for drawing, blocking in, and initial steps of a pastel work.


This brings us to the downside of our subject, which is that all pigments are not created equal. Some have more cohesive characteristics than others. It's just the plain facts of the matter - pigments are derived from natural elements, as well as some man-made efforts such as Manganese Blue, ferric-ferrocyanide (Prussian Blue), and Alizarin (Madder). Blue is one of the happy colors that are easy to work with. The linked websites below have details on what are the troubled pigments - those harder to make into soft, workable sticks. Different amounts of the binder (Gum Tragacanth) and the Whiting/Talc formula are what you'll need to experiment with to get your particular pigment "right".


I have been lucky, so far, with the colors that I have mixed. I have not yet needed a binder to add either cohesion or consistency to any of my pastels.


I also credit Kitty Wallis with giving me my first experiences with home-made pastels. She actually markets a product that takes the mixing of the water out of the equation. She has done the hard part, and put it in a jar for you to just start rolling paste sticks. Her Pastel Moist Pigments can be found here, along with the Createx Liquid Pigments that I really love. I know they are expensive, but the full set will produce more sticks than you can shake a, well, a dollar at. The factor is well in your favor. I came back from Kitty's workshop with eighty sticks, which is greater than $260 worth of the little gems. She also sells them in individual jars, so you don't need to pop for the whole set.


I chose the adventure of making the sticks from scratch, just like any artist who lived before the Nineteenth century had to. I wanted the earthy, craft-side of the artist's tools to be part of my repertoire. I do call myself a "colorist", after all!


Now we have covered making one's own simple grays in multiple values with easel left-overs (the one I made for the photos presented here is already dry and turns out to be a dark violet-gray-which Lorie calls "eggplant"), recovering a broken stick, and two simple resources for how to make soft pastels (de Marrais and Wallis ).


Articles on Making Pastels:

• Paul de Marrais. Via Daniel Smith.
• Katherine Tyrell's Squidoo Lens, and scroll down to "Making your own pastels".
• Sinopia; I emphasize this one which Katherine has linked, because it is relatively simple, and has well organized formulas for given color groups. The groupings are designed to help you get ahead of the curve regarding pigments that are less satisfactory for handling qualities. I suggest letting the pigment tell you first, though. I found that the hansa yellow light from Daniel Smith was fine without binder.
  

Readable articles about pigments:

• Golden.
• Sennelier.
• Wikipedia.
• Webexhibits.org/pigments.

Get Busy Making Pastels

Have some fun, and save money on expensive pastels, by making some of your own sticks. It's easier than one may have heard. Some of the information online is positively frenetic with how complex and difficult it should be. Don't believe it!

I will link to the super-secret and classified extra special and need-to-know web page that will provide you, a commoner and civilian, with the ultra evil and never before revealed magic formula that will de-mystify and reveal HOW TO MAKE ONE'S OWN PASTELS! Keep it under your hat, and reveal this to no one. Eat the instructions when you have completed your mission.

Are you on the edge of your seat? Good. Let's begin by gathering our tools and supplies. At first, you can even participate without buying anything expensive in the way of art supplies. Let's look at my photo of materials, but keep in mind that it is inclusive of the most supplies that you may want. For this basic session, you will only need items # 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7.

Gather the following:

1. The bits and pieces of broken pastels that are too small to use anymore. Seen at the left side of the photo in a dish is a broken yellow Diane Townsend, and in the little cardboard box are some mixed color bits and pieces.
2. In the glass jar are the tailings from my easel, all colors. I keep a length of mat board, shaped in a "V", on the easel tray and under my artwork. Then, it gathers the dust that falls, and I pour it (hold your breath) into a jar.
3. Also note two jars of store-bought pigment (optional: you can make pastels for now without these). This is expensive stuff. However, the quantity of pastel sticks that one can make by hand would set you back much more if you were to buy them on the retail market. It is the same pigment that goes into every colored thing on the planet: automobiles, oil paint, printer cartridges, etc. Pigment is pigment. These are powdered (which is pigment's original form) and are sold for artist's use in making paint, pastels, etc.
4. (Optional at this time) The white bags are various products to add to your pigments as "body" and/or binders when we start making our own new colors. From left to right: Titanium White (Black will be in a jar like the other pigments), Whiting, Gum Tragacanth, French Chalk (Talc), and Pumice Powder. These represent more Additives than you will need for the most basic pastel making.
5. I use a glass surface for my mixing and paste rolling. This circular piece of glass was surplussed (free) from a retail-supply store. If you live in Italy, the glass may be substituted with marble, which is cheaper than dirt in your mountainous country. Be creative and use whatever is easy to clean between different color mixings.
   
6. (Not Shown) A smallish spray bottle to meter out your water in a measured way.
7. Dust masks, latex gloves, paper towels, and Windex (spray glass-cleaner). You might want to resource a shop apron, and you will need old clothes and dedicated footwear (old tennis shoes, or rubber boots). Everything will launder-up fine, though.
   

Since my time is cramped, today, I'll let you just get these things together and go with the actual making pastels, complete with links, in my next installment.

Pastel Chums

Local Chums. And, more than that, the artists listed here are representing the passion, merit and quality of the pastel medium. Some also work in oil and other media, but I note them here in their work as pastelists.

Susan Ogilvie
lives on the remote Olympic Peninsula, an area close to my heart. Her use of color is graced by expertise and energy. She confides that her latest passion has been working with textural hand applied grounds, and she is always pushing artistic boundaries.

Jennifer Evenhus
is a Master Pastelist with the PSA, whose work makes every advantage of surprising and stunning color choices. She creates the loosest, most fascinating images I have ever seen. Eclectic subject choices also compliment her local subject matter (Beautiful Central Washington).
She's the only one of this group of chums with a blog. Way to go, Jennifer!

Sheila Evans
lives very close, in Spokane. Her work in botanical subjects graces the catalog cover (and web banner) of Dakota Art since she won the juried contest last year. She continues to earn well-deserved awards, and it is no wonder as she is a fantastic artist.

Marla Baggetta
of West Linn (by Portland), Oregon is my favorite landscapist in pastel. A self-described representationalist, she pushes the landscape motif beyond the real and imparts every bit as much expression in her art as any abstractionist ever does. A joy to view, her art is active and painterly. (Don't think: "trite" when I say painterly - her pastels are authoritative and original!)
Her hubby, Mike, is a talented abstract expressionist who works primarily in oil.

Patty Forte-Linna
of the Seattle area does interiors, which is a genre fresh with possibilities, I think. Degas was, of course, big on figures but almost always in an interiorscape. Patty is doing passionate work that always offers some original perspective. Even her outdoor cafe and veranda images have an interiorscape sensibility, which is testament to her consistency of viewpoint.

It seems like my tastes trend towards originality and freshness.

I also want to add some other very notable pastelists whose work I am nuts over, but who are from other parts of the country, and whom I hope to meet someday.

Terri Ford
I only recently became aware of Terri Ford's work. How could I miss her beautiful cover of The Pastel Journal? Her work titled Florence Night was fresh air to me, as I am looking for examples of colorist
Italian Landscapes.







Jane Lincoln
Usually, when you say that you are influenced by an artist's palette, you mean the colors they use. While I love and admire the color use of Jane Lincoln, I was really influenced by the physical palette that she puts her pastels in! See it here. Jane teaches color theory, and practices what she preaches.

M. Katherine Hurley
Like me, Katherine Hurley is much influenced by Wolf Kahn. The great, big difference is that I am influenced by Hurley, too! Her other-worldly take on realism keys on abstracted landscape compositions. Her use of color is expressive and pleasing, too. Her work influenced me to create a series of the four seasons, as she has done, that turns on bold, original and unexpected color compositions. Ever seeking original ideas, she has done some black and white pastoral scenes in pastel that make you still think of color.

Pastel Month Results - The Bunkhouse

The Bunkhouse
6.5" x 8"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
$375

This is the first Colorist American Landscape I have done in some time. It's nice to be doing these very free, yet challenging works. I have been wanting to get back to barns and outbuildings, too. I also wanted to get some cropped barn compositions that worked.

Another good feeling is finding a method for working on Townsend Pastel paper. You can really abuse this stuff, and the more the merrier. I did a wash of deep red, then mixed as many contrasts and compliments as it would hold without "filling up", as we say.

Lots of goals coming together!

Colorist Ruminations

Casey Klahn

Competing priorities today. I need to post a "daily" painting (which I cunningly post only every 100 hours) over at my Project blog. I also want very much to keep my promise to manufacture some pastel sticks to show the readers who have been following my March pastel materials threads. Thankfully, my little kids are at pre-school again today, after missing all of last week with the flu.

I am also on the fence between two ideas for April's theme here at at The Colorist newsletter. I have been wanting to do a study of the Abstract Expressionists, complete with bad photoshops of me rubbing elbows with Lee Krasner and Robert Motherwell. That's going to be a kick in the pants! The other idea is a project relating to art criticism. It will be a participative project for the artists and writers out there in blogland. Don't worry, though, I will keep it active and interesting for everyone as I endeavor to keep my promise of "no artspeak".

Which ones to do first? I have no idea. All of the buzz right now is on my previous post where the war between commercialism and creativity has been raging. I am happy for a rousing discussion, and it makes me think that I will go ahead with my art critic thread for the month of April.

Contemporary Biggies

I will leave some one out, and for that I am sorry. I have already touched on some prominent pastelists whom I favor, such as Wolf Kahn, Diane Townsend, Diana Ponting, and Kitty Wallis. Please have a look at a few more great lights of contemporary pastel work.

Daniel Greene.
I ducked into the Art Students League, by accident really. I was just passing on the street on my way to view some Wolf Kahn art on 57th in Manhattan. In the lobby of the ASL hangs a famous portrait by Greene:

Robert Beverly Hale
Former Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Collection: Art Students League, New York, NY
Pastel 50" x 36"

I was mesmerized by this chance opportunity to get up close to a great work. I could see free gestural strokes not easily noted by just looking at the work in print. The life in the colors, and the whimsical border given to a conservative subject - fantastic!

See also:

• http://www.linesandcolors.com/2006/02/04/daniel-e-greene/

Harvey Dinnerstein.
Short bio. If anyone makes the case for the supremacy of figurative work, it is Dinnerstein.
I first became aware of his work through The Pastel Journal, which featured his pastels. I get the feeling he works primarily in oil, but I include him here as one of the great lights of pasteldom.

Is there anyone in NYC with a desire to fill a need? Get Harvey Dinnersteins' presence on-line spiffed up. He is the most underrepresented genius artist on the net.

When I grow up I will return to the figurative work of my youth, and I will stick myself to Dinnerstein like a fly to paper. In fact, I am moving to NYC to begin classes tomorrow. CYaL8r!

• Try this one.
• Here is a stunning one at The Art Student's League.

Alan Flatmann Cover, TPJ

Alan Flatmann
of New Orleans was this years' Hall of Fame honoree at the PSA Annual Exhibition. He likes cityscapes and figures. Also, this artist makes the case for darks (black?) in his lively images.



Albert Handell is a man of accomplishment, who has spread the wealth, so to speak, by authoring a number of books including many in the pastel genre. You don't need to feel compelled to send me this one, but I wouldn't refuse it, either.

Intuition and Gesture

Yellow Gesture

18" x 11"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
CTA

The gesture embodies the intuitive approach to art. Sure, color choice looms large. Linear composition, also big.

And I am holding drawing up as the most fundamental pursuit within the big tent that is fine art. No offense, ceramic and glass. No offense print media, and photography. But drawing is the alpha (if not the omega) of artistic expression.

So, consider the gesture. Robert Henri denigrated the gesture in his seminal book: The Art Spirit. His opinion was that the gesture cannot stand without some purpose, or composition to be a part of. However, taken as an element of expression, what else goes so close to the bone of the artist's intention as the curling, bold, climactic gesture?

In keeping with my pastel feature this month, I offer the gesture as a pigmented mark pregnant with feeling. Grab a pastel; scumble it on it's side to tone your paper. Don't think about the next color. Grab the pastel stick and make a gesture with your whole arm - No! Your whole body! How does that look to you? Can it be improved upon? Should you add some definition to it? Or should you just discard it? Another color, perhaps.

Have a seat, now, square in front of you easel, and ruminate. That's it! Get up, choose another pastel stick and gesture along the paper. Now that precious mark has been covered; changed forever.

How does the drawing look, now? Was your intuitive choice of color agony, or ecstasy?

Carriera, The Proto-Pastellist

Rosalba Carriera
Self Portrait with The Artist's Sister, 1715

Image courtesy of the

Metropolitan Museum

Rosalba Carriera (1675 - 1757), a lifelong Venetian, became a sought-after portraitist and was the world's first "pastellist".

The actual paste formed from dry pigment and water, and then dried is considered pastel (almost always with binder added to some degree or another). The first mention of this medium was by Leonardo da Vinci in 1495. Some artists used the medium thereafter, such as Quentin de La Tour, but Carriera popularized pastel works in the eighteenth century, and established a large corpus of such.

*Not incidentally, the blessed Scots also invented Whiskey in about the same year.

Paper Choice

Gestural Detail: Abstract Reds Over Blues
Soft Pastel
Casey Klahn
Collection The Artist

The work on my easel now, The Bunkhouse, is being done on Townsend Pastel Paper. This choice I make based on my prior experience with that support. I want to over-work the colors and put down layers above layers ad infinitum.

Diane says that her daughter collaborates with her to produce this line of hand coated pastel paper. It is Rives BFK that has been hand coated with silicas, adhesive and other things that create a fine sanded surface. It doesn't take as much abuse as Wallis, but more than La Carte. It doesn't mind water, though. The Sennelier La Carte can be ruined by a drop of saliva, a random water spot or any floating drop of liquid spray that lands on it. There are repair methods for this tragedy, but if you want to tone your own paper you want something like TPP or Wallis.

My abstract that I posted here, I did on TPP paper. Because the paper likes to be rubbed and buffed, scraped and smeared. A favorite technique is to lay down a color, and then take it mostly off by rubbing with a chamois cloth, or a tissue paper. Try it with a kneaded eraser, too. If you over-apply pastel, and you need more re-working than simple fixative can provide, brush on some PVC diluted with water. Keep on working over the top of this patch, as if you had fresh paper.

As I work on The Bunkhouse, I notice that the Townsend paper is very good at accepting finger smears, and will accept just about any type of mark I want to make. I think I'm experiencing a breakthrough with it that I have been trying to achieve for some time, now. Looks like I'd better check the piggy bank, and order some new sheets.

In Praise of PVA

Gamblin PVA

When I took Diane Townsend's workshop on abstract pastel work, she was "all about" PVA. I, for one, am happy that she turned us on to Poly Vinyl Acetate sizing.

When diluted somewhat with water, one can paint it right over that otherwise irreparable Boo Boo on your expensive pastel paper. Viola! New paper to work your pastel magic on!
Let's say you filled the tooth with two too many layers of extra soft pastel, and "she won't take anymore, Captain"...

Whip out your little bottle of archival sizing, and go to town on the repaired surface. DT likes the stuff so well, that she even states "pastel and PVA" as the medium on some of her works.

Alternative: Get out your .22, find a rabbit and shoot it. Skin the hide, and scrape the... (you get the idea)

Intuitive Choices

Abstract Reds Over Blues
20" x 12"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
CTA

Under the tutelage of Diane Townsend I painted this abstract work. It has some elements of color field painting, like Mark Rothko, and extensive gestural elements. The gestural nature is in keeping with the drawing roots of the pastel medium. I like the way the paper's surface is evident, and yet the color blending, and heavily worked nature of the piece makes it work as a painting for me.

Let's talk a little bit about intuitive choices in fine art. The choices that a child makes are very intuitive, because their knowledge base is limited. The hands start moving, and the limitations are the length of their little arms, and the characteristics of the tools. They are mostly trying these tools out for the very first time.

A great deal is made of technique in art. The pastel medium is no exception. In fact, technical skill is probably too emphasized in this medium. It's supposed to be hard, you see. And, admittedly, there is much to know (much that I do not know!). Sometimes beginning steps are not rewarded very well by the outcomes.

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things."
Edgar Degas said in a quote posted at Expo Degas.

So, intuition! First sketches with bold gestural marks always work better for me than deliberate and measured work. The thing is to have years and years of drawing from memory in one's back pocket, and then the quick marks made on the paper will seem intentional. I don't subscribe to the subtle and tentative working that is often required of detailed realistic work.

The same goes for compositional choices. It is not easy to describe, but I think that studying good composition is necessary, and then ought to be put out of one's mind. If you can internalize compositional knowledge, it will come out naturally as you draw. The best thing I can say is: "try it".

The ability to critique one's own art becomes more important when you want to be an intuition-driven artist. Did this one really turn out to have the best composition? Color Choices? Does it have too much to say for one painting? Ask these questions of yourself.

Wolf Kahn has a chair that he sits in and ruminates over his finished art. Most artists do take some time and distance away from their works to try and get an objective perspective on their own creations. It's challenging.

The pastel medium is "made to order" for the artist who wants to favor intuitive creation. It is a direct, and rewarding tool. It's interesting to consider that in the book, Wolf Kahn's Pastels, the great colorist chose to make the text a collection of essays on artistic process. A natural fit, I think.

Details

Mary Richmond asked me about fixative and brought up framing, and I provided my humble two cents in the comments here. I won't go any further into the fixative debate, as I think the only thing I can offer there is my own experience.

I decided to stay with some highlights about the great pastel medium, and leave the details to
Wet Canvas and the other great resources out there in cyber world.

Catching Up

High Intensity Blue Tray, Various Brands of Pastels

Playing catch-up today. I want to get a Colorist American Landscape back on the easel, today. A farm building, from a detailed area of The Heins' Farm.

Here it is, the middle of March, and I am still on pastel brands, and I want to do a hand-made pastel session with my readers, and post some more images.

The good news is, my review of brands winds down pretty quickly. The Diane Townsends, Senneliers, and my own pastels are my favorites. The others that I use are mostly on the softer end of the range of types available. The reason I keep to the softs are to preserve hue intensity, and to limit detail.

If I were to become a detailed realist, I would have to buy a complete set or two of the harder pastels, like Rembrandt and Windsor & Newton. I do use pastel pencils, especially for my small works (Colorist Italian Landscapes). The brands I use are Derwent and Faber Castell. Of course, one must have that General white charcoal pencil, as it's hardness is preferable. Use a sandpaper pad to sharpen your pencils.

The remainder of my palette are Schminke, Unison, and a few of the harder ones already mentioned. The general intensity of these are modest, except in a few of their colors, and so they perform limited tasks.

I will say that Hersey's Unisons are great for consistency of handling. That's not what floats my boat, however. I am all about "dealing" with the materials that are in front of me. Every paper - pastel combination presents the artist with a new set of challenges. That's part of the creative pursuit, and leads to a lot of unfinished or ruined projects! But, the freshness of the successes! That's the bomb ( as the kids say).

So, the Unisons have some great low-intensity greens, and the Schminke light value, both low and high intensity, yellows are indispensable to me. I will say that Unison has some high intensity umbers and sepias (browns) that are terrific. I don't use these as a rule, however.

Others will have more to say about their favorites and the handling characteristics of various brands. But, now you know my own take on these mysterious tools.

I will finish by saying that I have no great love of paper around my pastels. I don't feel compelled, for instance, to make my own sticks, and then go wrap them in paper. So, I salute the few manufacturers who don't "paper" their sticks, such as Girault and Terry Ludwig.

Let me add one other thing. You want a set or two of hard pastels. I highly value my Sakura brand set (an actual line of artist's quality hard pastels), which I have no current resource for. Anyone out there know where to buy these?

More Products from France

I don't want to overlook some of the other good pastel products that come out of France.
Have a look at Pastels Girault, whose sole focus is pastels. Unfortunately, I have only tried a few of them, so I can't give a critique.
Additionally, there is the legendary Henri Roche pastel line. The story line for decades has been: "Good luck trying to get a hold of any of these beauties". You had to hire a private eye, or a French-speaking guide to help you find the secret location of their lab in Paris. Then, if you had a bottomless wallet, you actually found the shop, and you also have found it to be open (only Thursday afternoons), you may then be privileged to purchase a handful of these goodies for yourself.
The apparent key is the pigment to binder ratio. I will say no more.
Now, we are blessed to have a distributer in the US: Fine Art Store of Rochester, NY.
I don't have any, myself, but I do accept both bribes and gifts...
If you enjoy funny stories, don't miss Barry Katz' search for the legendary pastels, here.

Those French Products

Detail
Soft Pastel
Casey Klahn

Say what you will, the French have certainly cornered the art media market, big time. I cannot do without my Sennelier pastels ( A L'Ecu ) and my La Carte sanded paper.

Oh yes, I suppose one could stay with some very excellent American products and make out quite well. For instance, I feel that the Diane Townsend Artist's Pastels (Pennsylvania) and the Kitty Wallis' ( Oregon) Sanded papers are maybe the best products in their field anywhere.

But, when I scumble a DT Terrage pastel over the vegetable matter surface of a La Carte card, I have experienced a technique that is unrepeatable, to my knowledge, by any other set of tools. The Wallis is superior for other things, but not that particular move.

And, those Sennelier extra soft pastels are the best for keeping to the original characteristics of each pigment as much as possible. Sure, the sticks break easier in certain colors. But it is all about the color, isn't it? It's better, in Gustave Senneliers' mind (by modern extension, his company's collective mind) to keep the color of the pigment, than to satisfy the needs of consistent handling from stick to stick.

This is as close to artistic integrity as it can get, I think. It's absolutely none of my business, but if I were a Frenchman, I would want a Sennelier for President of France.

I am no chemist, nor am I anything more than a punter when it comes to making pastel sticks, but I hold the Diane Townsends and the Sennelier up as my two favorite sticks. Why not stay with just the DT's, which have the more pleasing shapes and overall characteristics? Because there are certain intensities of color that Sennelier has that I find no where else. Also, those big, monster size Sennelier sticks are off the hook.

Sure, Sennelier sticks are expensive, but when I purchase powdered pigment at retail, and roll my own sticks, the value of how much blue is in a Sennelier Ultramarine pastel stick becomes well apparent. In fact, when I find a Senneleir standard or jumbo stick on sale, I feel that the thing is coming to me at a net loss to Sennelier. That is when compared to what it costs me to buy the pigment to make them, without even factoring in the cost of my labor. Until I find a shipwreck of pigment jars washed up at the beach, or figure out which dumpster to dive to get pigment cheaper, the Senneliers seem like a great value to me.

Postscript: The Jerry's Artarama link (jumbo) above has an old picture of the Jumbo Senneliers in a wood box. Those are not being produced, I understand, and are replaced by the La Grande, which is still a big stick. I have some of all three sizes, and the monster ones rock. If you find some on clearance, buy them. You are taking them at way under cost.