Category Archives: pastel

January Nature Desktop Calendar: This Shining Night

Desktop calendar, 1280 x 1024 for square and laptop monitors.

Sunset comes early and dusk and nightfall quickly follow near the winter solstice. Christmas is among the shortest days of the year, and on this particular year I headed west on the trail, hoping to capture a beautiful sunset as heavy clouds gathered, then parted, and snow squalls and flurries filled the air. The timing […]

Featured Artwork: Mischief, a New Holiday Painting

Guess who’s getting into some mischief? It’s the little tag team, Mariposa and Hamlet! It always starts when one of them tags the other, and the chase begins, but I don’t think Hamlet looks like he wants to play right now. I vowed to paint this idea for the holidays this year, and, well, it’s […]

Unnamed Tributary, en plein air

Unnamed Tributary, 9 x 12, pastel © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

On a quiet sunny winter afternoon this little unnamed tributary surely had a lot to say, babbling along over rocks and shelves of slate and limestone on its way to Scrubgrass Creek a distance away. Off in the woods on January 12, 2012, I stood in the snow and painted a little pastel sketch as […]

Featured Feline Artwork and November Desktop Calendar: Autumn Afternoon Bed

I think this little sketch is one of the undiscovered gems of my collection of Daily Sketches and generally my cat art. Read more on The Creative Cat: Featured Artwork and November Desktop Calendar: Autumn Afternoon Bed

Autumn Colors, En Plein Air, On the Trail

"Autumn Colors", 5" x 7", pastel on board, 2022 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

I played hooky today and ran off into the woods. Autumn has been developing most beautifully and I keep trying to find the time to get out there and have a few hours in the woods to paint and photograph and just walk barefoot on the trails at least one last time this year. A […]

Deserted Cottages, a Long-ago Image, and a Childhood Friend

"Deserted Cottages", 17" x 8.5", Rembrandt pastels on Hahnemuhle sanded watercolor paper, 1998 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Sometimes a painting holds far more than just the image, and connections that hold many people together, as these deserted cottages did in life, on paper, and inspiration. In October 2011 I posted the original of this painting of deserted cottages along Lake Erie, and told of memories of my mother, selling her house, and […]

Five Favorite September Sketches of Cats

"Front and Back", white and black charcoal on toned paper, 8" x 5" © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

I scroll through my folder of daily sketches regularly, looking for images to use for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes just to look at them. I look at collections images of some sort several times a day for inspiration, guidance, instruction, relaxation, and I’ve always found reviewing my own work, honestly assessing it and […]

August Nature Desktop Calendar: Sunset, Moonset

Sometimes the moon follows the sun over the edge, especially as it did this summer evening after storms cleared. The lower sky was layered with clouds in all colors, wispy, puffy blended as if I’d put my finger up there and moved the pigments around. the half moon had risen earlier in the day and […]

July Nature Desktop Calendar: Summer Back Road

“Let’s go for a ride!” Back in the 60s in homes with no air conditioning, a mid-summer car ride on a country road with all the windows open was a real treat. Funny how just riding around and looking at things was a regular form of entertainment, even in the early days of television. Ice […]

Emerging Spring

Though I’ve already walked the early spring woods barefoot, cold and overcast, rainy and even snowy weather persists. But damp and overcast are the days when the spring woods look like this, the heightened intensity of color, dense shadows and mist among the trees. A scene tucked away along my favorite trail, I’ve visualized this […]