Here is my painting as of March 13, 2025. (I am painting this for a special event in Salem, MA, to celebrate Nathanial Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter.") I am using a quotation from the novel, shown below,* writing it on prison bars. The rose bush is also mentioned in that passage. In my painting, the roses can be seen through the prison window. The wild roses in my backyard produce long branches (runners) which I prune, but here I painted them in, positioned to form the letter A, which the novel's Hester Prynne was forced to wear as punishment for adultery. On March 13, I wanted to make the roses smaller and more subtle and I also needed to add another (lighter) coat of blue for the sky, so as I did that, I used the background color to cut in to the roses and leaves to define them and in some cases make them smaller. To be continued.
*Here is the quotation from Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter::
"But on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered, this month of June, with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of Nature would pity and be kind to him."
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