Red Rose Canvas Art

One interesting thing about "painting to order" or being an "artist for hire" is the variety of artwork you may get asked to produce. If you have read my about the artist Naj page you'll know I do not place limitations on my subjects or style.

It's not that often I get asked to produce a large canvas painting. And, it's not that often I get asked to produce a contemporary flower art painting. This art commission came about through a much smaller contemporary red rose acrylic painting I had listed in Depictions Etsy store. Basically, the brief was to produce a similar style painting on a large square canvas. I used a ready-made 80cm x 80cm deep-edge linen canvas for this painting. Here's how I went about it..

First of all, I sketched out the rose design in white charcoal onto the canvas. I do mostly prefer a natural color canvas over white, because a white ground seems to make acrylic paint colors harsh and too bright. White charcoal is something I only recently discovered when my local art store had run out of white pastels! It's great for sketching out like this.

Next, I applied pieces of torn tissue paper using PVA glue to build a paper-mache texture defining the rose petals.

Lastly, having prepared the canvas, I painted the the rose in acrylics - absolutely no black paint. I will not use black at all when painting in acrylics because it dulls/mutes colors and flattens the tones. To finish, I sprayed the canvas with a gloss acrylic varnish to enhance the richness of color.