Stowe Botanical Garden Irises

"Iris Times Two"
9X12
Oil on Raymar Linen Panel
Available

Click to enlarge the view.

This morning I worked only on the flowers.....so much variation going on here. Shapes and many different blues, violets, purples, deep crimson, all to be offset by the many greens of the foliage surrounding the blossoms....Finished this afternoon. Remember that everyone's computer monitor is color calibrated differently. The rich purples and blues were a difficult combination for photographing this time. I took the picture without any incandescent light, only natural light in my studio to get the best possible representation. The painting looks a bit more purple in real life than the blog is showing me.
There were a lot of sun strikes, transparencies, and shadows happening in this so it was truly difficult to capture all of the nuances. Hopefully I managed to do it without too much confusion.

Daily Painting, "Irises"

"Irises"
12X9
Oil on Raymar Panel
SOLD

Click on picture for a larger view.

This was the first Iris to burst forth in my garden this week..and as you can see, there are more coming! Happy Spring!
I was thinking about how formal Irises are and wondering why I think so. While painting this one I realized the reason. They have padded shoulders with epaulets, all dressed up for a military parade!! They seem so elegant, don't they?

This was a very complicated composition. There are many areas of different textures and a thousand shades of green. The flower itself is full of nuances and challenges of light filtering through with soft lines and areas that are graduated from purple to pink to white. Then there was the boxwood background with the saber-like spears of the Iris leaves in front. Tricky.