Purple Bearded Iris

A Purple Bearded Iris caught my eye in the garden. Its blossom is just so voluptuous and colorful. The bright purples are so intense and fade into beautiful ruffled lace on their edges. I especially love the spots in the center right next to a fluffy yellow bump. What is that bump called? I like the way this painting transforms into a black and white image so I thought I’d share that first.

Purple Bearded Iris 01
The first step for me is to identify shadow on the blossom, using royal blue. Yellow gives me background separation as it helps me to recognize where my petals are. I love the way royal blue can be used in almost invisible layers up to darkly opaque. It seems dramatic at this point but I hope to bring it into line later. Purple Bearded Iris 02 I keep adding greens to the background till I get the effect I want.

Purple Bearded Iris 03 To make the rich color of the petal centers, a deep red purple is dropped in on wet surfaces and extra is brushed off with a dry brush. The line details at the middle of the petal are carefully drawn in on dry paper. A drop of yellow brings that bump out. Browns are washed over the background last.

Purple Bearded Iris 04 — 9-1/4”w x 13”h watercolor on 140lb WC paper. A single purple bearded iris portrait with buds and open bloom below.

After reviewing these photographs I may try stopping with the background and leaving the tangle of leaves more singular in the next rendering.

Single Rose Demo

Rose Demo with Lisa Hill

This single rose reminds me of one I had in my garden named, “Sharon”. It was a bright character with a wonderful fragrance. I will be replacing some of my roses this year, and this multi-color one is high on the list.

While attending a Spokane Watercolor meeting at Spokane Art Supply on Saturday, we painted with Lisa Hill. She had this picture of a beautiful rose that we all painted as she demoed her style of mixing colors. It was a fun morning full of painting with other artists.

There were so many curves, shadows, and highlights when I began working on this. I had to be careful not to let the challenge overwhelm me. It is a real challenge to get the values right so that the three-dimensional effects become apparent. I have to just take it one petal at a time, it is the best way for me to work it for these types of paintings.

The dark background was added later and turned out to be a fun and dramatic ending. I like the way it reveals the silhouette of the rose. I plan to dig out my photographs from my garden last year and keep practicing roses for awhile.

Dragonfly in the Sun 04

Dragonfly Sunflower 17

Flower Details

For the Dragonfly in the Sun 04 tutorial, we begin to add details to emphasize where the flower petals curve down to attach to the center of the sunflower blossom. There is a distinct division of surfaces right where the petal meets the blossom cone.
Dragonfly Sunflower 18 Adding ultramarine blue and even purple accentuates how deep this crevasse is. Dragonfly Sunflower 19 The yellow petals are brightened with more opaque yellow washes over some of the areas. Also, reds are added to encircle the flower bud where the petals are anchored. Crimson or cerulean blue are then added to various petals to show where they is shadow. Dragonfly Sunflower 20 Whenever I paint flowers with all of their curving bright surfaces, it amazes me how many surfaces you discover. Soft arms reaching out and then curving back under another. Do you see a more solid blossom in the illustration now?

Dahlia Closeup 02

I outline the main characters in this Dahlia Closeup 02 with a light alizarin crimson wash background first. You know that when you mix reds and greens you get a real good and dark black. That is why I am using a red wash because I know I will be using greens for the foliage.

You can also see that I am putting Azo Nickle yellow as a wash on the prominent leaves and stem areas leaving only a few areas of highlight whites this yellow mixes so well. I will have to just be careful and reserve the most important of these light areas. Tricky. I have chosen the darkest areas of the left front blossom to apply a magenta wash so I can see where the darks are there.

Dahlia Closeup 03

They are many many shapes and objects put together that light and shadow do their thing all around. Each little petal catches the light and blocks it from casting brightness onto the surfaces below. The shadows bend and curve with each surface they touch. So many colors and shades when you start to illustrate them.

I love the way that the Hookers Green leafy shapes that seem to blur into the background as they are added. It used to scare me to try and paint realistic flower blossoms but now I really enjoy watching them appear during the process.

Cosmos Photograph 26 — Photograph of Cosmos in garden.

The purple Cosmos was a vivid beauty in our garden this year. Inspiring this artist to try out her wings with a new subject. Here is a completed watercolor study of a single purple blossom.

Via “Wikipedia“, Cosmos is defined as the world or universe, regarded as orderly, harmonious… quoted from my print version of the Webster’s Universal College Dictionary in the studio. Yes, I still use printed books to look things up because the old references often cover subjects more fully. In my printed version there is an additional definition #4 that is relevant to what I am sharing today.

4. Any of a genus, Cosmos, of New World composite plants having open clusters of flowers with red or yellow disks and wide rays of white, pink or purple.

BTW, I only have the purple cosmos, anyone wants to trade purple seed for white and pink? I have a lot of seed because I save them after harvest and use them the following year. Let me know if you’d like to barter.

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Cosmos Closeup J3319 — 5.5″w x 6.5″h watercolor on 300lb Arches, Lavender Cosmos very closeup blossom.

This is a study of the Cosmos flower up close. I do studies before I do any larger paintings. Using an Arches paper scrap that is much smaller than I usually paint on, I practice and see how to paint something new. This is not the first time I have been inspired by this beautiful blossom, check this embroidered Cosmos tablecloth out. It was a fun project that took over a year to finish embroidering by hand.

Beginning with a negative painting I put the background in, then warm it up with a wash of Azo Yellow. I then put in the yellow center and add shadows. Followed by, working my way out to the petal edges adding light and shadow.

Dahlia Patch Done

Dahlia Patch C142019 finished — Dahlia Patch C142019, 30″w x 10″h watercolor on 300lb WC paper.

Just finished painting the flowers in Dahlia Patch C142019 watercolor. I am loving it and planning to paint more like her. I saved seeds from my 6-8′ blossoms last year and plant them to well populate the garden with them again. So bright and beautiful to see when you work in the garden every day. Weeding and watering seem less tiresome when your eyes feast on beautiful combinations of color and fascinating insects and birds cruising around. There are only a few more weeks of skiing left, and I’m looking forward to spring and summer now.

Check out how many kinds of Dahlia’s there are, 42 species and it is native to Mexico. Did you know it was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963? Good old Wikipedia dahlia knowledge, interesting but hard to remember the scientific names sometimes.

What do you think of dahlia patch?

It took some time to get the details all in. It was funny but as I added details, I’d notice another missing detail in an area I thought I had already finished. Add a shadow here, oooh a highlight there and a half a leaf here. That petal looks weird, it needs a shadow under it too. You can see the progress in one day by looking back at yesterdays article about this painting.

Round and round she goes,
where she stops nobody knows!

Another unfinished is now in the finished pile and it feels great. At the meeting (Spokane Watercolor Society) the other night a fellow artist shared that she was going to either finish or throw away the paintings in her studio. Boing!!! That hit me square in the face. I have so many unfinished paintings lying around my studio, so I plan on making an effort to do that. No more unfinished stacks in my life.

Beautiful Flowers Blooming

dahliaPatch — Dahlia Patch 30″w x 10″h watercolor on 300lb WC paper

I was fortunate to have beautiful flowers blooming all summer in my garden this past year. I grabbed this painting from my “unfinished painting stack” tonight. This is not the first time to paint this Dahlia image. My previous attempt became all overworked and mucky. Seemed like it actually losgt itself in the background. I simply gave it up to turning the paper over and trying it again. See previous posts about my first attempt here.

I wonder how many two-sided paintings have I sold in my life?

Doing bright-colored flowers of any variety is so cool. This painting has a new type of background technique that is different and a little scary for me. Trying for a looser and softer background. One that will let us see the petals of the flowers without distraction. Blossoms with petals and all their curves, shadows… I am beginning to really like this one now.

Let me know what you think, so far.

This week was full of stressful work like taxes, paperwork, and illustration assignments. But, today was a great relaxing break to just paint. I worked on completing my painting for the Spokane Watercolor Society Member Show. It feels good to paint things that I like all day.

Dahlia Progress is Slow

Step By Step Progress

dahlia watercolor progress 5 — dahlia watercolor progress

This dahlia watercolor progress is slow as I experiment with getting the bright colors and shading right. It has been a while since I painted flowers, even though they are one of my favorite things in life. Isn’t it funny that we get distracted from what we love with our work in life? This paining seems to be more of a study of the light and casted shadow on the various petal surfaces. It is truly amazing how many surfaces there are on a single blossom. I love the play of light and how it makes something seem so 3D whenever I get it right.

Pink, my kingdom for a pink

It is surprising that the most difficult areas so far have been getting the right pinks to appear. It requires that I actually get the right amount of water to dilute the paint with the main one being used as Alzarian Crimson, or Scarlet Lake, the darks are better with the violet or purple ranges added. My daughter shares my interest in flowers, she has a site named www.dahliasinbloom.net, a place worth checking out.

You can see why I feel so inspired by blossoms, each day as I walk through our garden, I not only see vegetables and fruits. Luckily, there are many blossoms to pause and smell as I do my daily chores.

Time out

At this point, I am not sure if I am liking the way this watercolor is coming out so I may put it on the shelf to rest while I get back to my real work. When you paint for work sometimes your personal paintings have to wait till there is time again. The most important thing to me is to not make a big stack of unfinished art in my shelf, so I keep working on my un-done stack every week to keep it real small. A uncluttered studio is a happy studio.

Tag: blossom