Resources

Be sure to check out our YouTube channel. We have all kinds of learning resources, along with awards ceremonies, meetings, etc. Some of the featured award-winning artists include: Tony Allian, Mary Aslin, Mike Butkus, Lorenzo Chavez, Daniel Gonzales, Liz Haywood-Sullivan, Rita Kirkman, Joe Mancuso, Glen Marion, Christine Obers, Desmond O’Hagan, Jeanne Rosier Smith, and John Paul Thornton.

The International Association of Pastel Societies, in which our organization is a member, has some excellent resources for pastel artists.

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AO) and AI’s ability to create images with a few words or descriptive phrases, how do our pastel paintings compete with the endless and effortless possibilities of AI generated art? Your scanned or photographed art posted on the internet is available to create the massive databases needed for AI generated art. Did you give permission to the machine learning algorithms to use your art as a basis for generating Artificial Intelligent images? If you’ve never thought about your art being “scraped” from the internet, perhaps it’s time to consider that it’s already been scraped (or most certainly will be). Machine learning is happening, and all internet-available visual images are used to feed the massive data hunger that is necessary to support AI Art.

You can protect your art by using a few tools that can make your art indigestible with Nightshade or Glaze.

To fix or not to fix?

Many pastel artists do not apply fixative to their paintings because fixatives can alter the final appearance of pastel paintings.

Two leading pastel artists, Marla Baggetta and Karen Margulis demonstrate and explain their methods of applying fixative while minimizing or positively enhancing any changes to their pastel paintings.