Oils and Pastels by Margaret Dyer

OK. I’m beginning to get excited. This is the room we will be painting in while in Florence, the last week of May. We’ll move the furniture out of the way and paint to our hearts’ content. Can you imagine the beautiful photo shoots we can have in this room? I can. Can you imagine the beautiful paintings we’ll produce? I can. We’ll be staying at the Palazzo San Niccolo (pictured below), in Florence. On day 5 we’ll retreat to the Tuscan hill town of Fiesole, which overlooks Florence. There we will paint a model outdoors instead of inside the studio. We'll explore the town when our painting for the day is done. There is still room in my Italy workshop. Contact Debra Zamperla at https://www.artensity.org/margaretdyer THE IMPRESSIONISTIC FIGURE in Florence, Italy Saturday - Friday, May 25-31, 2019   Painting in oils or pastels from live models and photos. 

I want to welcome my new subscribers from FASO (Fine Art Studio Online). Thank you for signing up for my newsletter/blog. FASO is an artist oriented web site provider with easy to use, elegant templates. It's geared toward marketing the artist's name and work with blog, newsletter and ecomerce capability. In the month or so that I've been subscribing to it, I've already seen results. I've had a change of plans: I was scheduled to hold a workshop at Christina Debarry's studio in New Jersey the first weekend in May, but it seems I can't compete with Lynn Asselta or Stan Sperlack (with good reason--check out their beautiful pastel landscapes), who both have workshops around the same time and locale. So Christina and I have decided to move my workshop to the fall. We're looking at September or October. I'll post here when we have confirmed the dates. My apologies to those of you who have already signed up for the May class. This coming Fr...

I had two excellent surprises last month. I received a text from my artist friend Judith, congratulating me on my mention in the latest issue of the Pastel Journal. What??? I had to run out and get it to find out what was in the article. It was a special edition marking the 20th Anniversary of Pastel Journal , February 2019. The article, "20 @ 20," said, "To mark this significant Pastel Journal anniversary, we searched the magazine's bountiful archives to select 20 exceptional paintings at which to marvel all over again. And, we've included sage advice from each of the artists to boot." Wow. I'm quite humbled, especially seeing who the other 19 artists were. I thank Anne Hevener, Editor in Chief of the Pastel Journal and her staff for this wonderful honor. I sent them some flowers. And then, only days later, I received this in the mail from the National Oil & Acrylic Painters Society (NOAPS): an award for "Best Impressionism," for my...