"White Roses"

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"White Roses"

8 x 10 in

Oil on Canvas Panel

I started this painting with a dry brush approach, no mediums and a bit of burnt umber on the brush.  I didn't put to much information inside the roses, I will do that with the correct colors.

I then went into the leaves and stems since they are the darkest area of the painting, I used ivory black, and viridian.

After the leaves and stems where stated I moved onto the background, just adding a thin layer of cerulean blue, naples yellow, ivory black and titanium white.

Since these are white roses I cannot just put heavy colors on at first, my strategy was to preserve the whiteness of the canvas since thats the whitest you can go.  By doing this I can concentrate on the darks and slowly go into the lights.  For the mid tones I used burnt umber, cadmium orange, ivory black, and titanium white.  I do not have a lot of paint on my brush in the level just keeping it thin.

After the mid tones where stated I went into the mid light tones and light tones.  There's a bit of color in the white roses, it picks up surrounding colors.  I introduced into the roses some yellow ochre pale, and cadmium yellow medium.  I am also putting titanium white in the highlights, I am doing this so the mid tones can flow into the lights.  I then go into the stems and state the greens, I used cobalt blue, and cadmium yellow light.

At this stage I am re-stating the darkest darks in the leaves and stems.  This will pop out the roses even more, I am just using ivory black for this.  I also went into the roses and stated the darkest darks, I used burnt umber, ivory black, and cadmium orange.

After the darks where stated I also added some light greens in the leaves to bring some light into the darkness of the leaves.  I also went back into the roses and smoothed out certain areas and kept others pretty loose.  In this final stage I take things slower in paint application, the light areas I tend to go thicker so the paints can catch the lights and in the darks I like to keep it thin.  I hope you enjoyed this one, it was a lot of fun to make!