Roses are Red

This entry is posted especially for Valentine's Day not as we celebrate it today commercially but as we should truly remember it. A day of martyrdom, yes that's right a priest died breaking the law for love. Or so legend (and wikipedia) says, "St. Valentine's Day began as a liturgical celebration of one or more early Christian saints named Valentinus. The most popular martyrology associated with Saint Valentine was that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire; during his imprisonment, he is said to have healed the daughter of his jailer Asterius. Legend states that before his execution he wrote 'from your Valentine' as a farewell to her." 

With that in mind please remember that death and this holiday are associated together, thus I believe my latest sketches that are small parts of a bigger picture are appropriate.

To create these special roses, that will appear briefly, I had to create a Photoshop template, because well I wanted to turn a skull into a rose and skulls, as we all know, aren't made of a flexible material and don't bend. After getting a side and front view of a human skull I began overlapping the skull images and rotating them. Once I had a template created I printed it off for reference to sketch it out. Here are the sketches:

  

For the Skull rose blossom I decided to use as a piece of jewelry and embellishments in an up coming art piece, I'm still detailing, and after using the airbrush tool in Photoshop CS6 and playing with the layer blending options I was able to make it look gold:

Dipped in Gold

For the long stem Skull rose I debated leaving the color of the blossom white or making it red, I was worried that red would make it look too gory, but after talking with my friend Amy Rice, thank you for your help Amy, I went with red. I openly admit while I was air brushing the red on the skulls I was having an ALICE IN WONDERLAND moment thinking to myself "painting the roses red."

Red Skull Rose

Please have a safe and Happy Valentine's Day and don't forget Valentine's day is not just about chocolate and candy though if you forget to get your loved one something it could be deadly. ;)

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