Speaking of Art Blog
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Mary Ann Pals is a pastel and charcoal artist living near the southern tip of Lake Michigan in Chesterton, IN. She has enjoyed doing artwork all her life. In college, she received her degree in Humanities with an emphasis in the Visual Arts.
Speaking of Art Blog
1M ago
Quiet Interlude, pastel, 11x14" I don’t know about you, but lately I’m needing an extra heaping helping of calm and relaxation. I need to regularly let go of my pent-up stress from watching the news about divisive political wrangling and negativity, natural disasters around the globe from ever-increasing climate crises, gun violence in the US, and the very real threat to democracies around the world by power hungry wannabe authoritarians. Mis- and disinformation make trying to figure out what is real and what is fake mentally and emotionally exhausting. I just want to ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
1M ago
Prairie Abundance, pastel, 12x12" This is my newest pastel, of a Monarch butterfly getting sweet nectar from Joe Pye Weed at Mnoke Prairie, an authentic prairie at the Indiana Dunes National Park. I photographed this scene last year about this time, when the grasses were thick and tall and laden with seeds. In fact, the flowers and butterflies are sometimes hidden from view in the fall because of the tall grasses. I miss some photography opportunities because of that, but then that’s the nature of a prairie in early fall. I actually love Mnoke Prairie. I l ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
2M ago
I had the most intriguing and humorous message come through from the Contact page of my art website yesterday. It made me laugh out loud. A woman was inquiring if I had participated in an Indiana Artisan Marketplace in one of its earliest annual art fairs, as in just over a decade ago. Actually, yes I had, exactly 11 years ago at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis. I was honored to be invited to participate. Second question: Did I happen to be selling a painting of a duck in my art booth? Um no, not a duck, but a painting of ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
2M ago
Milkweed Plus 2, pastel, 14x11" This is my latest painting, of a butterfly and a moth on a milkweed flower. Right now, in prairies and gardens in the upper Midwest, milkweed plants are in their heyday and they attract a lot of butterflies and moths. This butterfly is called a Giant Swallowtail and the moth is called, believe it or not, a Confused Haploa moth. I did some research as to the origin of the moth’s label and I came to find out that this particular moth is hard to distinguish from some other kind of Haploa moth, so some scientist decided ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
4M ago
Little Queen, pastel, 14x11"
I thought I’d share how I go about thinking about the height/width format and overall look of a painting even before I pull out my chosen surface or start looking for colors to use. Nowadays I use Adobe Photoshop to play with key elements and figure out where I’m going. I try to keep my center of interest somewhere in the one-third area of the picture plane, either vertically or horizontally, not right smack in the middle. But there’s also negative space to consider, and there isn’t one right answer for what to do with that negative space.  ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
5M ago
Happy Hummer, charcoal and pastel, 8x6"
This is my latest art creation, a drawing of a female hummingbird that decided to make a perch out of some metal parts that were temporarily attached to our deck railing. So cute! Since the scene didn’t have very much color, I decided to render it using mainly charcoal and some minimal strokes of pastel pencil. I used Rives BFK paper because I can tear the edges to create a beautiful organic look.
The interaction of my charcoal pencil and the paper accounts for the grainy look which can especially be seen in the background. Do ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
5M ago
Rita's Garden, pastel, 10x8"
“Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.” –Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Well-tended gardens and their gardeners are magical to me. The flowers and fruits and veggies and butterflies and birds and bees all take my breath away. Gardeners are inspiring creatives with 2 green thumbs. That is what I was thinking when I visited my artist friend Rita Jackson’s garden 4 years ago. She invited me to come visit her garden and she talked about it as if it was a dear family member. To her it was.
  ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
6M ago
If someone asks me what my style of art is, I tell them it’s hyperrealism. I used to reply that it is photorealism, but not anymore. There really is a difference. Photorealism is where the artist is trying to make their 2-D artistic creation look just like a photograph, complete with its washed-out whites and its flat looking black hole darks. I don’t do that. My goal as a hyperrealist is to imitate the real deal, in my case nature/animals/birds/butterflies, and render them in as close a manner as possible to mirror reality. Thus, my reference photo is just ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
7M ago
Summer Dream, pastel, 16x20"
This is my latest pastel. It stretched me. Why? Because I wanted to try to depict what Lake Michigan looks like as if in a dream. When I go to the Indiana Dunes in the summertime to watch the sun set over that magical lake on a beautifully picturesque evening, I usually sleep well that evening because the luscious colors are still dancing and the lapping waves are still ebbing and flowing inside my dreams. But my dilemma was how to render that and make it look like a dream on a flat surface.
What Dreams May Come, charc ..read more
Speaking of Art Blog
8M ago
Song Sparrow, pastel, 12x12"
This is my latest pastel painting. It stretched me. I was having a bit of an artistic inertia problem a few weeks ago during the last days of winter. Nothing was grabbing my attention to start creating at my easel. I often find this happening as the long dark cold winter days linger on. So I bundled up and went for a hike at the Great Marsh in the Indiana Dunes National Park. Most everything was brown everywhere I looked, but nature always surprises and motivates me to dig deeper on drab days to find its less obvious tre ..read more