yellow roses and painting loose style…

                 Shade colors for yellow objects are obtained in the same manner as for other colored objects, except   that you would need a very light value of the shade color, as yellow gets dirtied very easily. In flowers, they very often tend towards green because of the light reflected from leaves nearby. A light glaze (over a yellow area) of yellow`s complement, which is purple, will give a shade color that doesn`t tend towards either brown or green. Raw sienna looks like a good shadow color for yellow but I find it makes the area too dull.

                Areas where the light hits the object directly (highlights), is not where you would find the most saturated color. The light washes the color out and they are just pale tints of the local color. Some artists like to keep them pure white to keep that sparkle. Areas facing slightly away from the light source have the most saturated color. Here, the roses at the centre of the painting (which are directly in the sun) look so beautiful and vivid with pure yellow half tones and white highlights…  

                  These roses are the farthest away from the viewer and I`ve painted them in a loose style. While painting loose, the trick is to think in terms of shapes of the values rather than shapes of the individual elements. Have all your mixes ready and lay in a clear water wash, leaving areas where you want white highlights. Lay in the lightest wash, this can be of different colors. As the wash starts to dry, lay in stronger values. I think it helps to do it when one doesn`t have a lot of time and is rushed, because then you wont go into details! Think in terms of chunks of foliage areas – light, dark or mid tone?

                I`ve changed the pink roses to yellow-orange, kept the purple clematis though, they give a bit of contrast to the yellow roses. S translucent orange, red madder dark and cerulean blue tone mix gives a nice deep brown for the pots, I didn`t want the terracota orange here in the background.

            Here`s the completed painting. One of my concerns was in getting the yellow rose shrub to look like it was growing in a curved manner, its not on a straight plane behind the statues. I have achieved that by having less details for the roses as they go from right to left and ofcourse, they keep getting smaller and smaller. (but I have kept the higher chroma in the distance, they are glowing in the light and thats what attracted me to these rosese in the first place)