Archive Mode. Call 2021 DAKOTA PASTEL COMPETITION - FOURTH QUARTER ended on 12/15/21, 11:59 PM. Call settings are read only. See Current Open Calls
The moment I first saw this beautiful flower lit by the morning sun rays of the Jersey shore I was immediately inspired to depict it in my artwork so I took a picture of it to use as a reference later. However, I didn’t get a chance to sit down and draw this flower for quite a long time - 10 years to be exact because I’ve been busy raising my four little children. For 10 long years I had been carrying this inspiration in my heart until I finally let it out this fall. I used soft pastels along with different pastel pencils (Derwent, Stabilo and Faber Castell) on a green pastelmat paper. I also used black soft pastel (Koh-i-noor) for the background to achieve an evenly matte surface around the flower. I used my own original photo reference (the one I took 10 years ago) to draw the flower. The original reference has a very busy mostly green background around and behind the flower but I decided to change the background to plain black to create contrast and to bring out all the beautiful colors of the Sicilian Honey Garlic without any distractions around it.
I truly enjoyed creating this art and I am happy to share it with other people.
