Painting with Fresh Roses

The most amazing smell of roses filled my little studio today, as I was ‘painting’ with roses.  Gently prying them apart or manipulating them into an arrangement for the newest card I am working on for Mother’s Day.

After weeks of working late into the night at my easel, painting on canvas, it was incredibly rewarding to work with this new medium.  

A slightly wilting rose is beautiful in a way that is hard to explain – there is an instant patina and texture, it reminds you how fleeting the delicate petals are, yet this is when we finally get to see the hidden beauty at the core.  I wanted to capture this in the arrangement of the petals and buds in the shape of a heart, not the cliche Valentine arrangement in usually brings to mind, but something slightly more ephemeral and imperfectly perfect.  If that makes sense 🙂

I must confess I cannot say that ‘no roses where hurt in the process of making this card’, but there were some lucky survivors that made it into a vase after the shoot.  I collected a nice big bag of petals now waiting in my fridge to be dried using a new method I am going to try in the microwave – later to be used in a painting, which I will post if/when it works out.

Going over the photos from the shoot this evening I was quite pleased with the results.  On to turning all of this into a story with animation …