#5 - Rose Study #1

Rose Study #1
8" x 8" - Oil on Canvas
SOLD

So technically, this is the last painting for January since I painted this yesterday, but February is here and I need to get a move on. The lead out. Truckin'. I'm behind. 5 paintings a month just isn't going to cut it. I had planned on completing 2 a week. I need to whip out 3 more just to catch up. I still have plenty of year left, so I'm not really worried.

What IS worrying me is my inability to decide what to paint. I have a weird form of painter's block. I have in my mind the type of paintings I want to create, but I'm not convinced that I'm "good enough" yet to take on the subject, so I'm trying to paint various subjects in order to learn the building blocks of how to handle oils. I have to trust that my style will come. How I picked the rose - I called my mother:

"Hi Mom, what's your favorite flower?"
"Why?"
"I need something to paint."
"Paint a rooster"
"I don't want to paint a rooster, I want to paint a flower."
"Why don't you want to paint a rooster? You could sell that. I have a friend that collects roosters"
"I just don't. Do you have a favorite flower?"
"My favorite right now are those...(no idea what she said here. It sounded scientific.)...they are like bunches of little orchids."
"Hmm. I don't know what those are"

So. She gets a rose!

With the rose, my goal was to mix the correct values, tints and shades on my palette as accurately as possible so that I could use a few strokes as possible on the canvas. With acrylics I did much of my mixing directly on the canvas and that worked for me. I can't do that with oils. Everything turns to mud. And when you aren't actually trying to paint mud, that's not a good thing. I think I came out somewhat successful. I will probably do several of these to really get the hang of it. AND I painted this on my brand new beautiful wooden easel that my sweetie bought me for our 1 year dating anniversary. Isn't he awesome?