"Pink Roses"

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"Pink Roses"

8 x 10 in

Oil on Canvas Panel

Hi everyone, hope your holidays are going really well.  This is my first painting back from vacation, and let me tell you it was hard to get back into it.  I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to paint this many roses in one session.  I'm glad I got it done, I learned a lot though still trying to push my technique as much as I can.  The colors that are in these roses are just beautiful!  So many different hues of pinks, it was really fun developing each rose on my painting.

I started with the usual dry brush approach to my painting using no mediums just a bit of raw umber on the brush.  After the drawing was completed I then started with the first rose on top.  I stated the middle and darker values, I used cobalt violet, quinacridone magenta, raw umber and ivory black.  As you can see with the drawing stage I had to take it further than what I usually do.  Roses are so intricate with each pedal and have so much value shift in such a short area.

After I added my darks I proceeded to add the lighter values by just mixing titanium white.  At this stage I'm pretty conservative with my paints, I'm still warming up and it takes me a while to get the hang of it.

After the top rose is close to complete I started on the second rose, I used the same palette as I did in the previous rose.  With this rose I started to get looser and more confident with the paints, still a little hesitant though.  Roses are very difficult to paint and it takes a while for me to get comfortable to paint them.

After the second rose is complete I start on the third rose and use the same palette as I did with previous two.  By this time I'm getting more comfortable with painting roses and feel looser too.  I approached this rose in a different manner than the previous two.  I started by just scrubbing in the local color, and still using the paints rather thin.  Then I start dabbing where the darks are going to be place and also the lights.  Then I scrub the colors where it needs to be smoother and dab where it needs to have more texture.  By playing with these two techniques you can get a nice feel to the painting, but it does take a lot of practice to gain control and make it look right.  

Then I do the same approach to the fourth rose using the same palette that I've been using for the other roses.  I then start hinting the darker leaves, which will bring the lights and colors out from the roses.

After the fourth rose is complete I then add the local color to the darker leaves, I used ivory black, viridian deep, and cad. yellow.  Then I add the background once the leaves are stated, I used cerulean, naples yellow, and titanium white.  When adding the leaves and background I made sure to soften certain edges and make others sharper.  Remember edges are extremely important, learn as much as you can from them.

This is the finished picture, I added more details to the leaves and also went back into the roses and pushed the chroma's in certain sections.  This painting was extremely difficult to paint in one session, I'm glad I did and got it over with.  I learned so much from it, I don't know if I wanna paint this many roses in one session but it was a good challenge.  I hope you enjoyed this one, thanks for stopping by and viewing!