Penney De Pas

Several years back, I decided I wanted to master painting the subject of roses. This took several steps, and I worked on them in both watercolor and acrylics.

At the time, I was recovering from right shoulder, rotator cuff, surgery, so I was using my left-hand to paint at first. The results were pretty amazing as I am right-side dominant. Here are a few of my first attempts at roses:

This is a step-by-step view of an acrylic I did with roses and white lilies. First, I filled in some basic colors, determining areas of lights and darks.

Then I added more colors to suggest depth, and concentrated on the greenery and lilies, plus some stems, stamen and flower center using brown.

Using additional colors--and, especially, shades (lighter, darker)--the flowers take on more dimension. I added some shading behind the right side of the arrangement, as well.

Here is the final piece.
I hope you enjoyed my demonstration of this painting!

Next is one of my favorite rose paintings in watercolor. What I discovered is that three to five different shades are needed for roses to give them the depth we perceive. The lightest part is usually the top edge of the petal and where the light is hiting the rounder, outside. A middle shade is needed for the main petal, and the darkest shad is inside the petals and underneath where the petals overlap.