I’ve never managed to do roses that don’t look terrible before. This was pastel class today, the set up was an agreement between all of the class. There was a white cherub in the setting I left out because I disliked it. I worked on red paper, which gave a really nice glow to the picture, still visible even in the final picture.
I like looking at the evolution of a painting. The first hour is the hardest as you’re often left staring at it thinking ‘this is dreadful why do I even’ and then it starts to resolve into something ok. The amount of work one does in the last 20 minutes on a 2.5 hour painting like this one is really tweaking. And walking away and coming back.
I am not entirely sure all my twiddles in that last bit were improvements – I prefer the rose in the front in the second last picture, for example. Ah well, the rest of it comes together with a bit of black and definition of the tablecloth.