The Roses And The Castle

The Theme And Topic

The picture shows a castle, a natural garden, and roses. Therefore, the theme is the combination of human being and nature. In my point of view, I think human being and nature should maintain a sense of balance. In my painting, roses can bloom brilliantly even if they live in a cold environment with aurora. In addition, the rose can climb to the top of the castle. It also shows that it is very tenacious vitality. Besides, even though the thin and aged balustrade was covered with roses and rose vines, it did not break. Therefore, from these two aspects, we can see that only when both human being and nature are strong can they achieve a great sense of balance.

Reference Pictures

Brainstorming & Practice

Steps

In the process of painting, I outlined the castle and the rough shape of the rose at first, then applied the base color with watercolor pens, followed by a second color deepening, and used various sequins to decorate this castle. Pastel was used to draw streetlights and gravel. Due to the original painting being rough, the sky was processed by computer to make it look more delicate.

Find resources and start practice.

Draft with pencil.

Outline with brown pen.

Lightly colored with watercolor.

Paint the castle using watercolor with sequins.

Use pastel to draw the gradient of the sky.

Use the pastel pencil to draw the deepening of the rose and the aurora in the sky.

Use Procreate (a special software for drawing) to draw the northern lights and the aurora and retouch the whole picture.

Details & Techniques

The Aurora: It is difficult to draw the aurora naturally, I used different lines and outlined it in a gradual way. Secondly, the edges of the aurora were drawn in an uneven way, otherwise it would look like a meteor rather than an aurora.
The Roses: Large roses took the form of a realistic sketch. The distant roses are drawn in a smaller shape. However, there is a special place in the castle. The castle is the farthest, the rose should also be the smallest. However, I want to highlight the theme of the balance between human being and nature. Therefore, I draw a clear outline of the rose climbing on the castle.
In addition, in this painting, the leaves and the pots and the roses are all different colors. Especially for the rose, I did a hidden color treatment where the basis is not destroying the black and white relationship, while making it rich in color because there is not only one color on the rose petals.
Besides, the sequins paints were used to create the spire of castle in the upper right corner of the painting. On the one hand, it changes the texture of the painting, and on the other hand, it makes the castle look more dreamy.