Don’t you love a good secret? I kept this painting a secret for over a year and once I started working on it it was difficult not to share at least a couple of photos (I knew the client follows me on social media). Instead of sharing the actual painting, I did the second best think and shared a photo of myself with Lola in the background while working on it, and while picking up a few new paint tubes I needed.

So here, for the first time are a few photos from the actual painting process.

The piece after about 5 hours of sketching.

And here’s the painting after starting the second layer. Don’t you just love it? It looks like the roses are just popping out of the canvas.

I spent a lot of details on each layer so I think I only needed 4 or 5 layers in total to finish this piece. Though, those 4 or 5 layers took me close to 40 hours in total.

Here’s a little view of where I sit every time while painting.  I wish this was neater and more stylish but oh well… thank god that lamp has been replaced since this photo was taken. And that desk is much cleaner, at the moment.

After adding shading, highlighting, pearls and some hints of rose leaves, the painting was finished and I packed it up and shipped it to Sweden.  The customers sent me this photo of it hanging in their livingroom.

This was a delight. I love painting details so I was really savoring every moment of painting this piece. Here’s more information about the painting.