Finished painting of pale blue Iris

 

                               Here is the finished painting:  

 

                          Continuing from the stage where I left off in the previous post, here I have done the first washes for the rest of the flower. The brown at the base of the left hand petal is a strong mix of orange and violet.   

 

                     Deepened the colors in the inner petals and added shadows.

 

                              The leaf is done in one step, with a base wash of yellowish green, and stroking in stripes of darker greens before the first wash dried too much. The first wash of the base of the stem starts with a weak orange at the top, green at the right and yellow and green towards the bottom on a wet area.

     

                       In the second wash, deepened the colors and added a few details.

 

 

                  I wet the complete background with clear water and dropped in a strong mix of ultramarine blue, a bit magenta and a bit of yellow, leaving the left area a little lighter and adding some orange towards the bottom.

 

                          After it had dried, the whole painting looked a similar value, and a tad boring , so I mixed two pudddles one a weak solution of pthalo blue and payne’s grey and another the same mix but much more stronger. This I applied on dry paper using the weaker solution towards the left.   

 

                      Now the background looked fine, but the flower looked on the violet side and after some hesitation, decided to wash the complete flower with a very weak solution of pthalo blue. With this, I lost some of the finer details but on the whole I am happy with the result. Lifted out a few highlights and rubbed out the pencil lines after it had dried.