Roses and Ribbons

I have been focused on flowers this week and I enrolled in a short online workshop with Richard Robinson from The Complete Artist.  Enjoyed the video demo but painting roses is very hard for me.  I am not sure if I just have an artist block toward them or I have just not spent enough time painting them but I find them hard to paint.  They are like little puzzles that have to be carefully followed to get "put together".  In addition, I am not a very detailed oriented, realistic painter so it takes a lot of decision making in regard to soft edges and lost edges and how to complete the painting using red without having your entire studio, clothes, hair, lunch, walls everything not end up red.  Red just has a life of it's own and once out of the tube be careful.....it crawls around

Rose Challenge

I try to complete the weekly challenge for DPW so that I can expose myself to different subjects.  This week the challenge was to paint a rose bush.  I am so insecure when painting roses because I see some artists who can really paint beautiful, realistic roses!   My third grade teacher told me I could paint roses and I have always remembered that even though it was many, many years ago.  I tried to pull from that encouragement when I entered this challenge.  I was surprised that I saw a little blue in the picture that was provided and so I painted by background with an undercoat of blue - I did find that I liked the way it showed through.