Blue Iris

I have one more attempt at an iris. I find them to be difficult flowers to paint, but I'm getting the hang of it. This one I painted without drawing it first but I think it is better to do the drawing before painting. Sometimes I want to get out the paints and just do it and it's not always the best idea. On the other hand it does have the advantage of spontaneity. I love the way Janet Rogers just paints a flower with no drawing. I have a lovely rose painting she did as a demo at a workshop. I look at it an sigh. I wonder how many she had to do to get that good.

We will be in transition from south to north for the next week. I hope to be blogging again soon.

Ruffles

There was a ruffled iris among the blue iris in my daughter's garden. It wasn't quite pink or bronze, it had undertones of purple but also yellow. I guess if you mix a purple and yellow you get a brown color but this was a prettier color and very difficult to duplicate. The fuzzy things, whatever they're called were bright orange. I added watercolor to my pencil sketch, unfortunately I didn't have my watercolor Moleskine but a little sketchbook and the paper was pretty thin and crinkled from the water. It makes for a nice memory of my time at our daughter's house.

Spring

Ink Iris

I finally got a taste of a non-tropical spring while visiting our daughter in Portland, Oregon. She had beautiful iris in her garden that were begging to be sketched. I did this one with an Elegant Writer, a calligraphy pen that is not permanent. When you touch water to it you can get lovely shading and even some variation in color.

While we were there we went to the Portland Rose Garden and even though most of the roses were not quite ready to bloom, there were a few early ones that were stunning. With all the photos I took I'll have a lot of references to work with.