The Rose Familiar in Black and White

My black and white version of my poetry book is being completed with drawings that have been reconfigured from the paintings that adorned the original color version. One of my favorite poems, as well as the painting that served as an illustration, was The Rose Familiar. I published this to my blog site about ten years ago, so I’ll restore it here for comparison.

For the black and white version, I used a different dog, a different portrait, and an archaic piece of pottery in substitution for the amorphous form that was originally there. I made the original painting from life so I had no preliminary sketch to adapt this time. Google images came to the rescue once again. From the latter source I was able to study the various forms of hibiscus that made their way in to the composition.