Portland Roses, 16″ x 20″, UART 320 board

Underpainting, stage 1

And here is the third painting, perhaps the most challenging in some ways.  My original thought was to change the color of the building, which was an orange-red brick to either a dull light green or an off white with red brick showing through. I was afraid that the roses wouldn’t stand out against the red brick.  I did several color studies and chose some reddish off-whites.  Then proceeded with the underpainting with this in mind. But then I really liked the look of it–the warmth of the orange wals–and decided to stick closer to the picture, which meant pretty much putting the same color over the underpainting.  However, I used a cooler pinkish red, rather than the real orange.  It actually worked fine. (I seem to have forgotten to photograph the final underpainting.)

I used my Terry Ludwig “vibrants” set for the colors in the building and Girault and Blue Earth for the foliage and roses.  I really enjoyed doing the window shades, which had subtle creases in them. Used Girault blues and a cream of close values and it worked pretty nicely.

In the photo, the foreground is a driveway with the end of a car at the far right.  I intended to put in the driveway but not the car.  The driveway was also light-speckled from the tree above. And the color was a blueish violet which didn’t go with anything else in the picture. So I tried to do it with a combination of red and greens (as I used in the shadowed areas of the building).  It looked dreadful and was a complete distraction.  My husband suggested grass–why didn’t I think of that!  I brushed it off, added some orange NuPastel and alcohol, then various greens, getting darker on the right with a hint of shadows from the leaves above.  SO much better.  With all the business of the rose bushes, a simple foreground that complements the building works much better.

This might be it for rose pictures for now.  But it’s been fun!