How to Paint White Roses

"White Roses on a Rainy Day"
9" x 12" Oil on Canvas Panel

It was raining today and my body hurt from an overkill on exercise (too much racquetball and hiking). I had a bad start to my day and it was raining out. I needed to do a supply run and by the time I got to my studio, I was exhausted and in a rough mood. But work harkened and I answered the call. Actually I welcomed the silence and stillness of my studio today and once the door was closed, I relaxed into my chair and began the piece I'm going to demo tonight while Nalie (Boo Boo), my cat, sleeps on my lap.

I started with a simple lay in of values with raw umber. I usually do more of an underpainting, but felt a bit pushed for time because of my late start so I took a short cut. At first I considered doing my background in a greenish umber so I laid that in and lightened some of the space to the left of the vase by adding cobalt blue and naples yellow.

The cloth was green so I started laying in the shadows with a mixture of sap green and some alazarin crimsen.

There's a bit of quinacradone magenta mixed with the umber wich I just splashed on behind the flowers on the table cloth. Not sure if I wanted this to stay or not at this point.

Here I've just finished laying in the background - right over that red and nothing much has changed.

Except that my Maine Coon, Simba, decided to join me by pushing against the door. After much complaining, I got him a pillow and made him comfortable. Dogs have owners, cats have servants.

I picked up this vase at a garage sale for a song and love it because of the great floral design on it. This sort of thing can be daunting for a newbie painter and even for an experienced painter it can provide a challenge. If you just treat the design as part of the whole vase, you'll have less problems. The design actually helps to describe the shape of the vase. I mixed the colors needed for the blooms with mixtures of naples yellow, cad red light and small amounts of yellow ochre. The greens were mixtures of sap green, alazarin crimsen for muting and darkening and cad yellow light and sap for the leaves on the vase. I tried to pay attention to the values of the decorations on the surface of the vase. In other words, if a flower was in shadow, it was the color of the flower in not the local color of the flower. At this point, the vase looks pretty flat and sort of pasted onto the background. Things are still pretty raw.

Here you can see that I've softened the edges of the vase. With a lightened version of the background color on the shaded side (right), I've laid in the shadow shapes for the roses. For the darker tones on the left side (lighted side) I've worked in some yellow ochre and touches of cad orange.

I thought that it would be nice to warm up the background a bit so I added a touch of cad red and white with a touch of quinacradone violet to the lighter areas of the background and pulled some of it into the vase for atmosphere. I've also started to add in leaf color here too and build shadows under the leaves with darker strokes of sap and alizarin crimsen. You'll notice that I put a little light behind the vase on the right side beyond it's shadow. This gives the illusion of depth to the painting. I've added some details to the flowers on the vase by putting in some dark accents.

Boo Boo came into the studio at this point and also complained mightily that Simba had the best chair and what was he supposed to do? Sit on that cold floor? Hmph. OK. Out came my felt vest and a warm place was made for him next to Simba. At least he wasn't walking through my palette - something he's done on at least one occasion before.

OK so settling in again, I started to add the lights in the roses. I made up a mixture of naples yellow and white and thickened it up a bit with Maroger Medium. Great stuff. Using a small 1/4" filbert bristle, I scooped up gobs of the mixture and laid it in on the edges of the blooms where I wanted the most light. I literally sculpted the flowers. Using a soft 1/2" soft bright sable, I made sweeps to suggest the broader edge of petals as in the flower laying on the table top. I've also pushed in the leaves here as well and suggested some up at the top near the blooms. I made the flower at the top larger to balance the bouquet better. Hmm. Still looking a bit flat at this point.

Well. It may have looked flat, but there wasn't that much left to do. I brightened the background, added some darker notes to the flowers and punched up the details on the vase flowers.

The vase still needed some dimension so I added a few darker notes to it's right side and some lit ones to the left. I created a cast shadow on the vase from the rose that is drooping on the left. Then I added some dimension to the leaves by sculpting them with a palette knife. Final touches were added by putting some lights on the table cloth and deepening the shadow under the vase. A little dab of reflected light on the right side of the vase and I was done. There's a better close up of the flowers on my other blog http://www.susanmartinspar.blogspot.com.