digging deeper: members’ articles

Featured here are posts by PSC members invested in helping other members. If you’d like to contribute an article, please send an email to Mark Baker at kg0pa@yahoo.com

Great Desserts are Less Fattening When You Paint Them
Oct 23, 2025
By Lyn Farrell Although I am a member of PSC, I am also president of the Pikes Peak Pastel Society—a smaller pastel society in the Pikes Peak region. As such, I am always looking for ways to engage our members in satisfying and challenging pastel painting projects. One of our favorite restaurants in Colorado Springs is Marigolds Café and Bakery. It has an amazing and beautiful selection of desserts for which it is famous around the city. The desserts are even served in the Garden of the Gods at the Trading Post. My husband and I became friendly with the...

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Five Helpful Questions to Ask Yourself. by Lorenzo Chavez
Sep 19, 2025
“It is impossible and senseless to commit oneself to plein air painting practice without some view of why you are doing it”. “One cannot simple take nature just as she is” -Edgar Payne “I am never in a hurry to reach details. First and above all, I am interested in the large masses and the general character of a picture”. – Corot Edgar Payne once said, “If anyone in the beginning of compositional study will set themselves to study the various compositional forms and experiment and practice with the variations of them, they will find their instinctive taste developed and...

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So, You Were Asked to do a Commission…
“The Overlook” by Jeannette Stutzman
Aug 22, 2025
By Mark Baker — You would have to be out of your mind to do a commissioned piece of art. There are so many pitfalls, red flags and potential problems with commissions! However, one day you may find yourself broke and in a sufficiently ‘economically compromised position’ to proceed with a commission against all advice. Brace yourself Bridget, the commissioned art business can look like this:

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