I have new soft pastel paintings to share with you this weekend at the Minnehaha Falls Art Fair, including this one of the Falls!

Minnehaha Falls Art Fair

Friday, July 17: 3-8pm
Saturday, July 18: 10-7pm
Sunday, July 19: 10-5pm

I’ll be in booth 304 near my usual spot and just a quick hop from Sea Salt Eatery.

What are Soft Pastels?

One of the most frequent questions I get from visitors to my art fair booth is “What are soft pastels? Are they like Cray-pas?”

Maybe you’ve wondered too.

There are two mediums that fall under the term “pastels”: 1. soft pastels and 2. oil pastels. I use the first one, soft pastels. Soft pastels are a dry medium, made with pure powdered pigment, held together by a minimal amount of binder. Quality soft pastels contain as much pigment as possible and very little filler. They can be quite expensive, but they produce amazingly intense colors that most other media can't match. They also have high permanence ratings, which means that they won't fade over time.

Cray-pas is a name brand of oil pastels. Oil pastels are made of a mixture of pigment, oil, and wax. Oil pastels feel oily, not dry like soft pastels. I don’t use oil pastels.

To confuse matters more, some people call soft pastels “chalk pastels”. It’s true that soft pastel sticks look and feel somewhat like a stick of chalk, but they are very different! Chalk is a actually a form of limestone.

If you visit me at an art fair, I always have a small sampling of soft pastels that you can try!

More New Work

Thoughts and Musings

The caterpillars I’ve been raising have become butterflies!

I’ve raised and released over 40 black swallowtail butterflies and 15 monarch butterflies so far this summer. It’s been a very fulfilling activity and, as you can see, many of them have made it into my new art.

I hope to see you this weekend at The Falls! And if not, maybe next weekend when I’ll be heading to Art at the Park in Appleton, Wisconsin.

xo Mary