Last month, I got a commission for an iris, and as often happens, once I start painting something completely different from what I was doing, I get excited and continue in that other direction until I get tired of that theme. So, the commissioned iris led me to paint three more of them, and right now, I feel I've completed my iris quota for this year.
These are not the first ones that I paint; in fact they are #7, #8, #9, and #10. The first one I painted was so awful that I only kept it as a reminder that practice makes you better. The second one was a tad better. I remember feeling happy with iris #3, and even happier with #4, both of which I had painted as gifts to my sisters. However, when irises #5 and #6 were done, I looked at the two previous ones with a little bit of contempt. This rarely happens when I look at previous landscapes I've painted. This could be a matter of how I approach the subject, because I compare flowers to portraits, thus I feel bound to be more exact painting them than when dealing with a landscape.
With these irises I took a different course in the composition. I've tried to place them in an environment, whereas all previous ones were more like a flower portrait with a single color background. So it's no surprise that in each one of these, the flower itself was the easier part, but the background and the surrounding vegetation near the plant, the areas that gave me hard time.
7 comments:
These are all really beautiful. Good on you for persevering. I love the backgrounds, they give the flower a 'place' if you understand what I mean, rather than just being a study of a flower. Lovely!
Every year I try to paint the irises in front of my house and every year they come out terribly. I kept one painting and refer to it as "The Angry Iris"! Yours are beautiful! I'm glad someone can do them right! I like them with their natural backgrounds too.
I like the last one the best. The warm background complements the cool colors of the leaves and the petals of the flowers. Also, having some of the flowers cut off in the compposition makes it look less staged. Nice job...I need to do something totally different, too. You should look into the Northwest Pastel Society's 2009 competition and show. www.nwps.org
Wow! Adriana, your hiatus has given you a gift, the gift of inspiration. These irises are wonderful. The compositions are well done and they have that light transparent flowery feel. Wonderful work!
Elaine, DonnaT, Matt, Donna V T, thank you so much for your encouraging comments. The truth is that I wasn't so sure about the irises.
Matt, the last one is my favorite too, for the same reasons you mentioned. The background was done with Pan Pastels, and so far this is the best use I've found for them. Thank you for referring me to the NWPS. I have started to look into similar ones nearby too.
Adriana they are beautiful! Im happy to hear someone else getting stuck in themes. I like the last for the reasons already said but, i like the purple/yellow iris, even like the yellow of the background. which one is used for the commision or will you let them pick?
Betsy , Thank you! The commissioned one is the lavender one at the bottom. I decided to paint some more for a Mother's Day show, since flowers are always a favorite with buyers. For the background of the yellow/purple iris I used an iridescent pastel. Unfortunately it doesn't show, but it adds interest without detracting from the main subject.
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