Valentine Rose

His Neilyness bought me surprise roses on V-day! I usually celebrate Love My Bike day on the 14th because Valentine's is about two weeks after out anniversary and there's only so much romance I can take. Also, by mid-February I pine for my bicycles.

Still, one does not look a gift rose in the spines, and these lasted long enough for me to have a stab at painting them.

This was attempt #2. Attempt #1 lies underneath all that paint. After the utter fiddly failure of Attempt #1 I laid this out in Payne's Gray with my fat bristle filbert and glazed it afterwards with quinacridone red and a bit of yellow ochre.

Painting flowers is, oddly enough, not my favourite thing to do. I could do a right lovely job on it with pencil crayons but for some reason the paints just never seem to work out. Considering all that, though, I rather like how it turned out.