“A Christmas rose.”
Back to still life. The weather started to have a more wintery feel. It is still good enough for plein air, but if becomes more of a challenge to paint outdoors, with drizzle every day, cold winds and cooler temperature. Considering all this and the fact that I didn’t do many still life paintings recently I decided to start doing them again. And, because Christmas is coming, I wanted to paint something more Christmassy. Hence, we bought this gorgeous hellebores, also known as Christmas rose. It is a poisonous flower, but it doesn’t belong to rose family, although the flower resembles a rose and despite the common name. It flowers throughout the winter, till early spring. The flowers are mostly white but can vary to various pinks.
I used a canvas tinted with pink and I painted with a different palette than my usual one. I used kings blue light, lapis as blues, Italian Cassel earth, unbleached titanium, jasper, titanium white, cadmium yellow light, yellow lemon and transparent brown oxide.
I worked alla prima, over few sessions in the evenings, throughout the week. I didn’t use any medium, just turps. The flower kept changing continuously, but I stayed with the original composition.
So, here it is:
“A Christmas rose.”
Oil on linen.
30 X 40cm (12” X 16”).
