"Coral Roses" (oil on stretched linen; 20" x 16") sold

sold

"Rose Posy" (oil, 8" x 10")

Recently I've received a rather odd commission request to repaint "Rose Posy" much larger in a vertical format with a glass vase against soft yellow/green background. The client also wanted the roses to be coral instead of pink. I said it would be very difficult, but she insisted that it should be done. The result several weeks later is "Coral Roses".

Many things have happened since I accepted the commission: the tragic death in the family, the trip to California to attend the memorial service, the recovery from my cataracts surgeries, and the Hurricane Florence with daily rains. I struggled with the commission in the middle of all the above.

I found the image of the "Fairy" rose, which I believe is what I had originally painted during Danni Dawson's workshop at her house a few years ago. They are tiny roses and I had to blow them up, shift colors to coral, and somehow rearrange individual flowers to make a pleasing composition. It was probably the hardest commission ever!

What did I learn from this project? Don't accept an unreasonable commission? Not sure. Because I am about to accept another totally-out-of-the-comfort-zone commission. I decided to turn it into a learning experience. I usually paint what's in front of me, or from a reference photo. But what if I don't have a good reference? I will have to make up, be creative. I am constantly evolving as an artist, embracing challenges, instead of doing same stuff all over again. So, bring it on!

"Fairy"

""Pale Pink Rose" (watercolor; 6" x 6") sold

sold

With the success of the white peony painting, I decided to try another pale flower.  The painting reads as a glowing pale pink rose, doesn't it?  I guess I shouldn't avoid white or pale-hued flowers after all!

"Rose Glamour" (watercolor; 8" x 6") sold

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A peachy rose bush at its peak. What a gorgeous and glamorous sight!

"Delicate Beauty" (watercolor; 7" x 5") sold

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Some roses are hot and passionate; others delicate and bashful. This one is definitely a delicate beauty!

"Pink Rosebud" (oil on linen; 7" x 5")

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Ever since I took Danni Dawson's workshop in June, I am wild about roses.  I feel like I finally learned to paint the queen of all flowers.  Petal by petal, leaf by leaf, a rose emerges against the dark ground.  The promise of the fully-open flower makes this pink rosebud even more enchanting!

"Catharina's Rose" (oil on linen; 8" x 8") nfs

nfs

"Catharina's Rose" is for Catharina, my husband's fifth cousin, who kindly hosted a lunch in her summer cottage on an island in the Stockholm Archipelago during my family's recent trip to Scandinavia.  I took a picture of her beautiful rose, thinking that it might make a good painting for her. 

The world is a small place, as my husband Peter found her 12 years ago through his Swedish colleague, who knew her professionally. Peter has met her a few times since, but it was the first time for me and my daughter. Peter's great grandfather emigrated from Sweden in the mid-19th century.  After all these years, the family connection has been rekindled.  I would like to thank Catharina and her husband for the delicious lunch and for welcoming the "long-lost cousins" with open arms!

"Rose Sprigs" (oil on stretched canvas; 8" x 10")

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By Thursday, the temperature hit 90's!  Prudently we painted inside, myself choosing a small bouquet of roses as the subject.  As it turned out, this painting turned out to be the most difficult project of the workshop.

My teacher, Danni Dawson, is a master of contemporary realism, renowned for her luminous portraiture and exquisite still life.  She showed us how to paint the rose, gooseberry, strawberry, melon, and glass bottle.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't paint like her; I simply did not have her patience of painting a petal by petal!

I brought the roses home, hoping to finish the painting.  The flowers died in a refrigerator.  The thing to do, as Danni assured us many times, was to paint the way I painted.  So I did.  Using the image on my smart phone as the reference, I made finishing touches on "Rose Sprigs". 

The beginning of the painting

Many steps later.

"Summer Roses" (oil on stretched canvas; 10" x 8")

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During the week of June 8th, I took a workshop of my teacher, Danni Dawson, at her house in Arlington, VA.  What a workshop it was!  Six of us painted in her rose garden, then when the weather became oppressively hot, we went inside to paint still lives in her spacious studio.  Danni, a gourmet cook, also prepared every lunch of an Italian dish made fresh with vegetables from her garden!

"Summer Roses" was the first painting of the workshop, which I didn't quite get to finish. Yesterday I worked on the leaves to make the painting more lush.  How do you like it?

I started the painting on the canvas toned with an ultramarine blue, which became part of the background. Cool, don't you think?

This is how far I got on Monday. After a heavy thunderstorm that night, the flowers were all gone!

"Pink Rose Magic" (watercolor on paper; 8" x 8")

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Pink roses in the sun. Ah, they are pure bliss!

"Pink Rose" (watercolor on paper; 7" x 5")

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One of my New Year's resolutions is that I want to paint more watercolors.  Here is the first watercolor painting of the year--a pink rose, fresh as morning dew, glowing in the summer sun.  What do you think?

"Summer Roses" (oil on linen; 5" x 4") sold

sold

I h
ad trouble titling this small gem.  "Rosy Glow"?  "Rose Brilliant"?  "Rose Shadow Play"?  In the end, I settled with "Summer Roses" although I took the reference photo for the painting in early fall.  Do you know why?  The painting just feels hot!  The sun casts colorful shadows on the petals; the background is shrouded in cool darks, from which a few sunlit leaves emerge. How would you title the painting instead?

"Pink Rose Glow" (oil on canvas; 8" x 8") sold

sold

I painted "Rosy Glow" (oil, 8 x 8") from a photo last night.  What do you think?  I had painted the same flower last summer at a rose garden.  It was a very hot day, but I sweated like a pig for a different reason.  Who knew painting a single rose would be that hard?  Let's face it.  It is sometimes easier to paint from a photograph.  The flower didn't move by the breeze.  The sun didn't rise higher as time went by, changing all the shadow shapes.  And no pestering enthusiast wanted to take a picture of me painting!

Do you know what the biggest problem in painting the rose on location was?  I saw too many colors!  Let's see. Many shades of pink--warm (warmed by the sun) and cool (cooled by the blue sky) to start.  Then there was reflected light in the shadows.  Oh my god!  I had to simplify, simplify, and simplify.  Still the plein-air painting didn't work.  I threw it out.

In my studio version, I did simplify the colors in the photo, which unfortunately I couldn't find to show you (I must have deleted it in disgust).  There are just enough subtle changes in the color temperature to make each petal turn.  A rose, or any flower, should look fresh, not bruised with over handling.  I hope you agree with my sentiment that I pulled it off this time.

"Pink Rose Bush" (oil on linen; 8" x 10") sold

sold

Reference photo

Since I mentioned the rose in the previous entry, I thought I would share a little painting of roses.  As you can see, I haven't changed much from the photo, other than editing out the clutter on the upper right corner.  Does this mean that all I do is to copy a picture?  No, not really.  I take a great care when I take pictures in the first place.  As a matter of fact, I do the composing with my camera, and I believe that composition is the half of the game in art.

By the way, copying a photograph sounds like a bad thing, but it itself is a great deal of work.  A photo is not a painting, no matter how good it may be; much thinking and brush handling go into a painting to make a piece of canvas look like a piece of art.  After I was finished with "Pink Rose Bush", I had so much eye strain, my eyes hurt terribly.  I was behind the schedule (I try to do a painting a day and I was one or two paintings behind for the week), so I worked in the evening.  Perhaps, I am getting old (gasp!).  I used to paint in evenings all the time when my daughter was little because the evening was the only time when I could paint.

There is a Chinese American painter, called Qiang Huang (his blog link is included in my favorite blogs and websites).  He is a physicist with a PhD degree, and literally moonlights as an artist by painting at night.  He is quite successful as his paintings are in high demand; he conducts workshops and sells his daily still life paintings on eBay.  Frankly, I don't know how he manages it at all with a demanding full-time job and keeping up with his nightly art career!  Does he have more passion than I do?  I doubt that.  He must have more stamina.  I should load up on ginseng or something.

"Last Roses" (oil on linen; 6" x 4") sold

sold

I suppose this piece is about a cycle of life: birth, a full bloom, decay, and fruit of life.  On a personal note, I wish I could paint like this all the time, effortlessly and with conviction.