Romantic Roses or Mapping out a Technique

Romantic Roses

8 x 10 inches- stretched canvas

Acrylic paints from my photo

This blog post is all about organizing steps to a particular painting technique....and some pretty roses. I wanted to cement in my mind some basic steps to painting with opaque paints in a slightly impressionistic stye. Flowers are really great for exploring technique.....they have lovely colours, they usually are great “models” for resource photos, and they have many complex surfaces that do really nice things for shadows.

So I picked a reference photo out of my stash, choosing one that had the flowers backlit in the sunlight on the counter. The first step was to get rid of the “white canvas syndrome” by setting up the composition in stark black and white terms.....by outlining the roses with black paint and just leaving a white silhouette of the roses. I then began to lay in some “local color” i.e. pinks for the actual roses. I'm just laying in swaths of colour without doing much of anything for detailing. I just want to “sketch in” the form of the roses.

The first stark black and white only layer was to get my value composition set. It was the strongest the composition was ever going to be.....but it lacked any colour/detailing/beauty. By layering in greyed pinks I began modeling the roses in colored values. This allowed me to put in just those colours that showed the modeling of the form of the roses while still keeping the strength of the stark dark and light of the original layer.

After having done the composition and value portions of the technique flow.....I next turned to the aspect of warm and cool colors and the “push/pull” of how they can be used to visually push back or pull forward a form. The flowers were in a “high key” or very light in value, so I put out some light value warm and cool colors and began painting. 

As I modeled the roses' forms, I tried to constantly remind myselves that I only needed those details that established the roses' forms and that what the painting “needed” was the most important goal. I wanted the focus of the painting to be on the lowest rose so I did the most modeling/detailing on that rose. It also had the most intense colours and the most contrast of value and warm/cool colors. 

I think I accomplished my immediate goal of trying out my “simplify” plan of painting......and showing off some pretty pink roses.