it's complicated
When you work at a church for several years, you create a lot of relationship series art especially if the month also happens to be the shortest month of the year. The art is almost always red because how can it say relationship without red?
I'm no longer working at a church although I enjoy donating my time and skill to create sermon series art. For It's Complicated, I wanted to focus on weddings with black, white, and gold as the color palette. The title art features two balloon dogs walking through a heart-shaped wedding arch, but they quickly realize their expectations for marriage aren't quite aligned.
As they entered the arch (the back side of the arch for the viewer), the roses all appeared beautiful and well lit, but as the balloon dogs step into the arch, the roses no longer have the luster anymore. The presence of thorns is now apparent and can threaten their relationship if they're not careful.
The wedding arch was simple to create since I created most of the rig for a crown of thorns at Easter time. It involves taking putting a spline wrap on a helix object and wrapping it around a heart shape. To create the thorns I set a selection of random faces and applied a motion extrude effector. I ended up downloading a FBX rose object but I redid its bump and roughness maps to fit the style.