Purple Rose Trio - Colored Pencil Drawing

I recently added "Purple Rose Trio" to my Etsy shop. It is a 5"x7" colored pencil drawing, which comes with a 8"x10" white Crescent mat. I used Prismacolor pencils and Strathmore Artgrain black paper. I used a personal photograph of a purple rose bouquet as my source material, but added more color to my drawing (the roses in my photograph were only a very pale purple - almost white).

It is for sale on Etsy here.

Here is the final product:

And here are some detail shots of the piece:

Here are the step-by-step photos I took while I created this drawing.

I started with a very pale purple pencil called "greyed lavender": 

Then, once I had those highlights sketched, I started to add in layers upon layers of color. First came green and blue for the leaves in the background:

Then a golden yellow for some of the dryer/browner parts of the petals:

Next, I added in some pink:

And blue, because pink+blue makes purple:

Then I used a slightly darker purple to start blending all those shades together:

And I added more highlights on top again with the "greyed lavender" pencil:

I incorporated a brighter, darker pink for the inside shadows, blending it with a darker blue to get purple:

Finally, I used a darker purple-black shade to darker places that still needed darkening:

...And went over those light purple highlights again, to up the contrast against the black paper:

Ta da!

I was very excited with how this piece turned out. Purple and blue are among my MOST favorite colors (as an artist, I really like pretty much any color, but purple and blue especially). :)

I posted several pictures of the process of this drawing on Instagram, where it was very well received:

Don't forget - the original drawing is for sale on Etsy here.

Michigan Orchid Show (Post 3)

This is the last post I'll make about these orchid photos from the Michigan Orchid Show - I promise! :)

I took hundreds of photos, so these three posts certainly don't cover everything they had. But they're a pretty good representation of the wide variety of orchid plants they had on display and for sale. My grandmother purchased a white orchid - and bought me my very own spotted orchid as well.

They also had a display for a fake orchid wedding dress. Such a creative idea!

These are purple orchids sewn into the tulle train of the wedding dress.

And here is my new orchid plant, on my kitchen table at home!