Bloom Series, Rose Bud

Bloom Series — Rose Bud.

Bloom Series Rose Bud is one of six bloom paintings in the collection, each selected from the garden. Roses are a worldwide symbol of romance, distinguished by their elegance. This famous woody perennial is characterized by showy petals, prickly stems, and a sweet fragrance, with layered, overlapping petals that form a bowl-like or spiraling bloom. Roses come in various colors, including red, pink, white, yellow, orange, purple, and multi-colored varieties. The Rose Bud, with its small, compact leaves, presents a smooth and elegant shape as it begins to open into its mature form. Prized by garden enthusiasts everywhere, roses are a staple of gardens and a favorite as cut flowers in homes.

MEDIUM: Digital Painting | STYLE: Painterly Realism | SIZE: 8 x 10 | ORIENTATION: Landscape | TOOLS: Procreate, 13″ iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro, Giclée Fine Art Archival paper and ink | AVAILABILITY: Prints available | CONTACT SHADOWMYST ART FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

ARTIST’S PROCESS:

Bloom Series: Rose Bud, was painted in Procreate on a 13” iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil Pro. The Rose Bud, like each painting in this six-piece series, replicates the depth and texture of traditional paintings through layered digital brushwork. A meticulous structural drawing was created, detailing the shape, leaves, stems, and patterns for this particular piece. The background color is a neutral light grey with a watercolor texture pattern and a gentle sweep of small, irregular dots in a mix of medium grey and cream color, spread across the canvas behind the blooms to add movement to the piece. This background is uniform across all six pieces in the series, unifying the series.

The subsequent step involved color blocking for the compacted petals form, the protective green outer sheath (sepals), the stem and mature leaves placed on separate layers. Above the base color of each element, multiple rounds of intricate detail work and value refinement were applied to render the unique characteristics of each form.

The petals of the rose bud are compacted into a single form with varying separations at the top as the new petals begin to separate. This compact form is encased in protective green sepals which open and bend down and outward over the stem as the bud unfurls. Each of these forms have different structures, textures, and lighting effects requiring specific brushes such as the

The Procreate copic brush was used for blending the petal light values in different passes with color values to create the velvety texture and color gradient of each petal. The sepals are thicker and have a rough texture along their edges which was created using the Procreate Noise brush on a foundation layer with several passes with the Procreate Stipple 2 brush at 2% size and full opacity along the sepal’s edges.

A Procreate medium watercolor brush at 100% opacity and 15% size was utilized for the foundation layer of each leaf building up the shadow and highlights with multiple passes of progressively lighter green.

Reducing the brush size to 4% the process was repeated for the stems following the established light source.

The final layer utilized a fine-tipped Procreate brush to detail the veins on each leaf and on the sepals.

CHALLENGE:

A rose contains many petals layered on top of each other. In the rose bud these petals are compacted to a single shape and depending on the stage of the bud the top of the bud may have the start of petals separating as with the bud pictured in this piece. The multiple, compacted petals beginning to open at the top of the bud presented the challenge for this work.

A detailed sketch was created to map out the overlapping layers of the opening petals to establish the fragments of forms created by the opening bloom. Following the sketch outlines a small watercolor brush at 100% opacity and 2 % size was used to set the base color, shaded areas and highlights of each petal in different passes beginning with the smallest petals in the center of the bud and working outward to the largest petals on the outside of the bud increasing the size of the brush as the forms became larger.

Building on the petal separations created by the previous layers highlights and deeper shadows were created along the petal edges and where the petals remain compact accentuating the depth of the bud’s form.

SUBJECTS AND THEMES:
Botanical — Rose Bud — Flowers — Garden — Nature — Bloom Series — CONTACT SHADOWMYST ART FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION