Vignettes

Okay....I'll admit it. I have a bias against flower "portraits". I guess I've just seen too many iris paintings in local art shows. However, here is a painting I did one morning out at Ocean Point of some Rugosa roses (beach roses) and their fruit, the rose hips.

The format is a vignette, which is a shape in the picture field that touches three edges of the paper at different intervals, leaving the rest of the painting as the white of the paper. It requires making the shape interesting so that the negative space will also be interesting.

I also formed a line of the flowers to guide the eye through the painting. It would also work if you painted one flower larger to serve as the focal point.