I’m designing a new coloring book, this time with roses.

Do you love roses as much as I do? Grown in gardens around the world, roses are one of the most loved flowers for their beauty and scent. Whole gardens dedicated to roses bloom here in May. Most of them then bloom continuously until the first hard freeze of fall, but the first few flowers of spring are the loveliest.

Over the past few years I’ve managed to photograph a wide variety of different roses. It seemed a reasonable progression to turn those photos into designs so they could also be appreciated by colorists who share my passion. I didn’t want just line drawings for this book, though. I opted for gray scale because I felt that it would give colorists a better idea as to how to shade their finished work. Gray scale designs may also offer hints as to which color goes where, such as on the Rock ‘n Roll rose in the photo above. Anyway, that’s my hope…

In designing this new coloring book, I added a gray scale tutorial with tips for how to color roses and rose foliage, but I didn’t want to stop there. I plan to add a full color tutorial here on the website as well as a gallery of the roses included in the book.

Designing a new coloring book is a challenge!

With info about the meanings associated with different colors of roses, Bible verses that illustrate those meanings, and tips and tricks for growing roses, I want to make it a must-have for colorists who love flowers. Maybe I can even inspire you to grow your own roses if you’re new to gardening.

But this book has already grown to 130 pages, and I’m not finished with it yet. I hope to finalize the artwork and text, edit it, and publish it by the middle of next month. This would seem impossible but with so much artwork, there really isn’t a lot of text.