Hi Irina!

Thank you for a great class! It was such a joy practicing flower painting on those last few winter days. Spring is fully in the air now :)

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Before taking this class I've hardly painted any rose in my life before. I've always thought that this particular flower is too much complicated structure wise and I should practice on less sophisticated florals first. Well, my "first rose" time finally reached me :D 

I've got some beautiful roses for a Valentine's day, so there was no way that such gorgeous references will be wasted - it's always great idea to practice drawing from life, rather than copying photos, even if they're your own.

 

 

Same as you did, I started off with ink and watercolours. It was the easiest and quickest part of the whole class :)  I tried my best to paint in a more relaxed way than I usually do and this is what I came up with. I understand, that this illustration already looks detailed enough, and can be considered as a realistic painting (without ink outline, of course) but for my eyes everything less than that looked sloppy and unfinished. I know that it's probably not true and I'm working on it :D Hopefully in future I'll be able to add some flowy washes and splatters in my drawings :)

 

 

 

Painterly style was pure struggle for me! :) Those roses just didn't want to look like they are actually roses, so I gave up on the initial task and kept working until my flowers didn't transform into some weird succulent-like plants :D 

 

 

 

And, finally, the most comfortable painting approach for me is realistic drawing. Of course it took much more time to paint in this style but it's definitely worth it. I've also tried out new paper and watercolour set, so it was perfect combination of complete newness to me - new subject matter, new paper and new paints. All worked great, can't complain at all :)

Overall, I'm very grateful for this class, I honestly learned a lot and finished painting with very satisfying idea in my mind that I want more roses now! :D

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Materials used:

1. Fluid Watercolor Paper, hot press finish, 140lb/300 gsm (used for ink+watercolours).

2. Saunders Extra White, 100% cotton, 200lb/425 gsm (used for both "painterly" and realistic styles)

3. Schmincke Horadam Aquarell pain set of 18 5ml tubes.

4. Prima Marketing Pastel dreams 12 colour paint set.