I’m going to draw some roses. I need to look at flowers! This sad, cold, snowy, icy Spring weather is getting me down, and I want to spend some time gazing at flowers that bloom when it’s warm.
Roses are tricky to draw because they are so very red. (Or, whatever color they are, they are always very intensely that color.)
Drawing any flower with graphite is challenging because you have to figure out how to express its color in a way that looks real, but roses are particularly difficult because people “know” them so well and expect to see color.
You have to start with a beautiful shape and then punch up the contrast to make them “glow“.
I have some photos of roses that I took a summer, and I’ll be working from them. I’ve printed out a few in color and a few in grayscale and I’m having different reactions to those different versions.
I can almost smell the color roses, but I can almost touch the roses in the grayscale photos. I can almost feel how soft and cool the petals were. I can almost step into the grayscale photo and move around the roses.
The color photo seems much more limited. Hopefully, my drawing will combine all those reactions and will be it’s own expression of these roses. (Gosh – hope I can live up to those expectations!)