Late Afternoon Roses (Posterized)

Late Afternoon Roses (Posterized)
Originally uploaded by randubnick

This image began with a photograph that I took yesterday during a walk at Long Hill Gardens, here in Beverly, MA. It was shortly after 5 PM and I loved the look of these roses, back-lit with the late afternoon sun, so I took a picture or two.  Tonight I cropped the best photo to get this composition, and that's when I noticed that some of the leaves had been eaten by enthusiastic insects.  So I opened the image in Painter and used digital pastel to fill in the holes, which in some cases meant actually drawing in part of the leaf.  As I worked, I also noticed some places where stems just stopped short because a blossom had been cut.  So I used more digital pastel to make the cut stems disappear.  Then I posterized the image, and here it is.