Most of the time guitar makers think about rosettes as patterns. Small tiles with designs are inlayed between veneer lines to create circles of patterns. I have done patterns as the primary way of organizing the rosette, but I also like to think in terms of color a light like a painter. Pattern drops away in favor of the blending of color by the eye when two or three colored veneer lines are set next to one another. 

If you lay a blue veneer line next to red veneer line and back up a bit to view the rosette, you eye will blend the colors to make shimmering purple. I like to think about pure color and light in rosettes by juxtaposing both strong complementary colors and very closely tones colors to see what happens. 

But there's always room for more patterns. I'll up date this entry when I work further on this rosette. The color will pop out when it has finish on it. 

  

This also gives me a reason to post some paintings by Pierre Bonnard- Rosettes work differently than these paintings, but there's a visual kinship between the colored veneer lines in rosettes and the way juxtaposed colors shimmer and blend in the eye on these canvases.