This painting is 15" x 11" painted on Arches 140 lb. cold press bright white paper. I made a DVD of how it was painted and it is now available. I wanted to create a sense of depth and presence with this.

The reason I call this Ambitious Rose Garden is because when I decided to paint this, I thought it was going to be tough. But as it turned out, it was a pure joy! I was really enjoying all the details and the foliage. So I'm happy with this one!

To get the composition that I wanted, I used 3 different photos of roses and put them all together in one painting. This is the result of that.

This painting offered an opportunity to explore how the colors in the deep recesses of the rose were affected by the sun and the blue sky overhead. They range from red, to red-orange, and down the spectrum the other way all the way to violet. This ...

I photographed this beautiful group of variegated roses growing in my neighbor's garden. It was a challenge to paint those colors.