Door-yard roses

I must admit that I have never to date used the term "door-yard" and I am familiar with it only through Walt Whitman's poem When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd. However, a close friend of mine has a walled patio in France, with roses over the door, and he asked me to paint the scene for him. So, here it is, door, yard, and roses instead of lilacs. There is sage and rosemary too.

The first picture is the underpainting, and because of the complexity of the foliage and background, I reduced the original photograph to 16 colours in Paintshop Pro, and based the underpainting on that, choosing only 16 pastels nearest to the colours in the altered image.

The second picture is a development of more colours, still using pencils and Rembrandt, but also moving into Sennelier and Schminke where the colour was needed. The work is progressing in the main from top left to bottom right, although I went vertically down the left side to work on the door, the big pot, and the ground. I was surprised to see the profile of Julius Caesar appear on the pot...

The third picture has some more detail on the roses, after fixing. I am working on darkest darks and lightest lights to gauge maximum contrast; and a new palette of colours has been introduced to work on the sage leaves.

To be continued.....