I had wanted to add some lines to these roses here like a nice piece of poetry by Keats or Shelly, then I wondered if I could just give myself the permission to let the feelings welling up inside me flow out into words, so I did; and these are the lines that came to me. I made a few small changes and I found I could not make them better in any way for they captured my emotions perfectly and so here it is, my first poem, if you will:
I lightly sketched in the vase with a pencil. The first thing to do when you start a drawing is to determine whether you are looking up at the object or down to it. Here, I am looking down, so the ellipses of the vase get wider/ fatter as they go down. Determine the height and width, draw a center line and then make ellipses at the neck, throat and base and any where else that it changes shape. Connecting the outlines should give you the shape of the vase.
I positioned the main shapes of the flowers and leaves:
I blocked in the major shapes with pastel sticks, yellow, green and grey:
Rubbed in the pastels and started on the details with colored pencils:
A few watercolor washes:
Watercolor Journal 