A Rose By Another Name

A Rose By Another Name       6" x  6"     Pastel        ©Sheila Ashley Liston
Available $75

This plant is grown in my area in the midst of all the beautiful warm colors of fall. It's always thrilling to me to see how our Creator chooses this color palette. While the earth is covered in orange, red, gold and yellow with touches of green, this beauty pops up in shades of purple.  What a delightful treat for the eyes, this is a fine example of the use of complementary color in nature. Although, I've never grown ornamental cabbage before, I hope to plant this next year in late summer and patiently wait for the color explosion!

This pastel painting on UArt 500, has its' rather rough beginning in black watercolor to determine the values.

It's next stage is not much prettier! Here I've added a dry ink product called Inktense blocks. It is put down as a dry stick of color, and the water added to spread the color. This is a new material for me and I do enjoy watching the water bring the color to life.

In this stage, I added hard pastels (Nupastels and Rembrandts) lightly on the sanded surface to begin to establish the colors.

  After adding more color with some soft pastels (Senniliers), I defined the light edges, as I knew that this would be hard to be accurate in the final stage.

At this point, I added more fushia colors and defined the outer leaves with greens. I was able to work closer to the edges to create lost and found edges that didn't look so stiff. My final thoughts were that the painting had become too dark. I lighten the and softened the outer edges to finish.

Have you had the experience of growing these? Let me know any tips that you've learned.

Maine Estuary

Maine Estuary     6" x 12"    Pastel       ©Sheila Ashley Liston
Available $145

Sometimes the ordinary scene has so much to tell, that it becomes an extraordinary painting subject. I'm drawn to these areas of transition between the ocean and the rivers, that offers some protection to the inland from extreme weather events.

After drawing in an outline, I used black watercolor to establish the value pattern.

Here I began to use Inktense sticks to begin laying in the local color

This is the fun part where adding water to Inktense causes a burst of color and dripping.

After the sanded paper (UArt 500) has dried, I began to add pastel. First, I used hard pastels. I worked with lighter values in the backgound and used peach, lavender, and pale blue pastels to paint the overcast sky, and then to use the same to add the final details in the water areas.

At this point I used soft pastels to add final details along with some hard Nupastels to add the grasses and weeds in the foreground.