My process

Many people wonder how artwork is created. Well, in my opinion it's created with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. LOL, all kidding aside some paintings seem to just flow off the brush and it's as if you are channeling Monet or Sargent or Schmid. Unfortunately this doesn't happen very often. In the hundreds of paintings I have done, I can count on my one hand how many times this has happened. Most artists agonize over their paintings. More often then not, it's a constant struggle of problem solving. Simple composition or complex one... lot of negative space or just a little....to add grapes or not to add grapes, that is the question.

The roses are blooming and I couldn't resist painting a variety of them in this porcelain vase. I started with the set up and wanted to have a dark background. As you can see I have it set up with a dark background. Roses hold their shape for quite a long time but after getting a rough drawing of where the vase would be, I massed in the roses and begin refining the most important ones.

Set up with roses massed in and a few roses refined


A close up of more roses refined



After about 5 hours of painting, I had most of the roses in with a basic vase and some background. This is where the dilemma got me. I originally wanted dark background but the more I looked at it, I thought maybe a lighter background would be better but it was late and time to put the brushes away for the night.




The next day I worked more on it and continued with my original concept. I'm still debating whether to paint another version with a much lighter background.

"Rose Rhapsody" 16 X 20

There is still a bit of tweaking left to do with this painting but overall I think it works. Would it work with a lighter background? Yes but that's a painting for another day.