Challenge and Chance to Win

You can win here!  Comment or join the challenge to win.  Get a free issue of the Pastel Journal for entering!

The Pastel Journal is promoting Maggie Price's new book, "Painting Sunlight and Shadows with Pastels".  I was offered the opportunity to submit a painting, with advice from the book, then share the challenge with you.

Maggie Price is the author of Painting Sunlight & Shadow with Pastels. Maggie is a co-founder and former editor of The Pastel Journal and is also the current president of the International Association of Pastel Societies.  Maggie's book is very informative with contributions from five pastelists. 


If you are a reader of the Pastel Journal  or have attended the International Association of Pastel Societies conventions, you have heard of her.  She is an amazing pastelist and very generous with her talent and time.


 Here is what the Pastel Journal  says about her new book:

"With Painting Sunlight & Shadow with Pastels, readers will learn to manipulate the effects of light and shadow to create beautiful, lifelike paintings. Author Maggie Price and her contributors give readers all of the tools and tips they need to be able to paint brilliant sunlight and multi-layered shadows in pastels in 13 complete step-by-step demonstrations, including landscapes, seascapes and manmade structures. Whether artists enjoy working outdoors or prefer painting from photographs, this book is loaded with insights into painting a wide variety of lighting situations, including how to paint scenes at various times of the day and at different altitudes."

And from the back cover:

• Master pastel artist Maggie Price shares techniques for painting beautiful light, rich shadows and convincing reflections.
• 13 step-by-step demonstrations tackle a diversity of lighting situations, encompassing various weather conditions and times of day.
• Five contributing artists explore different styles, approaches and subjects, including landscapes, water scenes and people.
• Concepts are demonstrated with pastel but are applicable to any medium. 

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I found this book  full of instruction, how to paintings and beautiful pictures to inspire and help you paint better.  I will be reading it over again and again, I am sure.

I challenge those of you who follow my blog regularly and others who are interested to the following:

1. To enter, paint a pastel painting with light and shadows and e-mail me a copy which I will put on a page here on my blog (Tab at top of page).  Your work and link to your site will stay on this paintings page of my blog.  (I will keep a link to this post on the sidebar for quick reference, too.)
2. Or you can comment here on this post/entry in my blog.  Painting not required.
3. Contest will run through September 11, 2011
4. Those of you that enter will receive a digital copy of the Pastel Journal.
5. The winner, picked at random will receive a copy of Maggie's book.  Mailing is limited to the US, UK, Canada and Europe because of restrictions of the Pastel Journal.

You can see a digital preview of the book here.

If you can't wait to "win" your copy of the book, as readers of my blog, you can take 40% off the price with the code "Sunlight2011" at the NorthLightShop.com

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It was definitely a challenge for me to do my painting.  With our move for the summer and visitors here in Angel Fire, I was limited on the time I could put into the painting.

I used Maggie's advice for doing thumbnails, underpainting and light for midday.  I had attended a workshop given by Liz Haywood-Sullivan in March of this year and was reminded in her contribution in this book of her ideas for the shadows and depth she demonstrated at the workshop.

I  started with a lighter value painting with the darks a couple of steps lighter than I usually do, but found that I do not have enough pastels in the very light colors to keep the painting that light.  I resorted to a palette more like my usual style to complete the painting.

I painted on a white Pastelbord, 9 x 12 inches,  perhaps if I had left the sky and path white in the underpainting, I could have kept the higher values.  Guess that means I need to have more pastels, right?

Here is my finished painting. (I will show the steps in a following post.)

Entrada, 9 x 12 inches, pastel on Pastelbord

I hope you have fun with this and we get many entries.  Chances will be good for winning the book.


**If you don't have a Google ID or one  of the ones listed, you  can comment anonymously(click on comments below) then either send me a private e-mail with your name or put "Joe from Scavenger Hunt" or "Joe from SW forum" or some way I can know who you are in the comment.  Good luck.