How The Rose Painting Developed

A painting has to start somewhere once there is an idea. For my process I do an under-painting, Although I most often use burnt umber or sienna I used purple for this image. I rather like it, do you?

Sometimes I would like to stop at this point. Well, I pushed it by adding some color glazing in the example to the right.


Then I made the addition of some transparent white giving solidity to the background and the flowers. More glazes were applied over the white additions in the example to the right.






This example to the left has been warmed up with additional glazes.




Then the details were refined and final glazes were applied. When dry into the frame it went. A wedding gift to Nick and Megan Kucharski.

"Rose Bouquet" 

Acrylic 11  X 14 inches

All images copyrighted by Sherry Lee Patterson and cannot be reproduced without specific written permission of the artist.

"The Sunflowers Three" is making progress.

The blue sky is underpainted.

The under painting is complete with the blue sky and yellow flowers.

"The Sunflowers Three" is making progress. The under painting is complete. Now to get on with applying the glazes. I love doing this layering of color. It wakes up the painting and wonderful things begin to happen. To me this is part of the magic of art.

A glaze is a thin transparent veil of color applied over the under painting or over another glaze. The purpose is to enhance the color creating jewel like tones and it can make the colors brilliant.

A glaze can be used to tone down a color patch that is popping or too noticeable. A glaze will enhance and add depth and life to shadow areas and push colors further into the background.

Warm colors are applied to bring an element forward on the picture plain. To push a color toward the background cool tones are glazed over an area. The complementary color grays down the color beneath it. To add luminescence a veil of a transparent white is applied over a highlighted area then more color is glazed over that.

In this stage of my work there may be from 5 to 15 or more layers of glazes applied. I keep adding glazes until the effect is pleasing to my eye. After that happens I will refine the the painting, possibly adding yet more glazes. I will get the glazes resolved and take another picture to post for that stage.