How NOT to do a Rose Painting Tutorial!

As some of you may be aware I have stated I would do a tutorial of painting one of my roses.  I am sharing this post with you all to show that I am trying but I think doing step by step tutorials is going to be a trial and error event for me for quite some time. 
UPDATE: TO VIEW THE POST ON HOW I PAINT A ROSE JUST CLICK HERE.
I need to learn to snap photos with my left hand (or wait until we are able to get our tripod residing in Idaho at the moment and a remote for my camera) before I can produce a quality tutorial.  I did start out okay…
First I showed how I sketch out the pattern (this is for a sign that was ordered from my website recently) I know it is faint but I really don’t want the lines to show up in the finished product and I just need guidelines.

And I move on to showing how I base the leaves.  I do a couple coats or sometimes three to get the paint good and opaque. 
First stroke..

Second stroke…voila..a leaf!

Then I get going and paint all the leaves in.  See how much more opaque they are…I did not say they were great, just opaque so no critics here, I admit to being a sloppy painter and yet it all comes together in the end!

Now I was thinking, so far so good. Right? 
Nope, I completely forgot to show you HOW to hold the brush, load the brush and squiggle on the u strokes…

Then I really got bad, here I was trying to hold the camera and take the photo in my left hand and the brush in my right.  I never realized cameras are generally set up for right handed people.  I think my hand was covering something important while taking the shot, or maybe it was blocking the flash, I was so involved in trying to do two things at once I did not notice.

I continued putting down layers of petals and somehow did not check on how my photos were turning out as I went along.

And in this one I am not sure how I got a clear shot! But you can see the layers starting to form the rose.

There’s that mischievous shadow again.

Here I am starting on the second rose…then I gave up on photos completely.

I went on to finish it up with no more photos.  So sorry I can’t do two things at once…but it was good practice.  You can see the inspiration photo in the background.  This one they wanted the roses to be a darker more intense pink.  Now to add the wording and we will be finito!

Maybe I should go straight for trying to learn how to do video tutorials instead.
UPDATE: TO VIEW THE POST ON HOW I PAINT A ROSE JUST CLICK HERE.
A VIDEO SHOWING ME PAINTING A ROSE:  ROSE VIDEO

One thing is for certain, I learned I cannot man my camera with my left hand.  Tutorials are a lot of fun to look at but they are rather a lot of work as well.
I received my paint in the mail for my potting bench, now I am mulling over how exactly I wish to do it.   With the 70’s degrees + temps the past few days the wet cedar fencing boards should’ve dried out.  They were dripping wet as we screwed them together when building the bench. 
I was going to paint a design on the back then decided I would rather put a sign on it, then I can switch it out as I desired.
Last but not least, I wanted to say I enjoy all your comments and compliments.  I do try to reply to most of you that are not ‘no-reply blogger’ and I was answering those too before I figured out it was going no where but sometimes life gets in the way and I don’t get to it.  I just wanted to be sure and let you know it is not that I don’t appreciate you all.  Life is most likely going to get crazy for awhile and I will pop in as I can.  There is tons more projects I want to tackle and checking in here and sharing gives me added impetus to get them done. 
So come back and see me when you can and I promise to keep trying to get a decent rose tutorial done for you.
Until we meet again….


Check out my website for more signs..