loosening up

I love tall bearded irises and have been wanting to paint some. Or even just draw some. So when they started blooming this spring I took about 746,925 pictures and then looked and looked and looked at the shapes and colors and lines and then I finally did a watercolor painting of three irises.... which I promptly threw away. Then one day in watercolor class the instructor had us do some wet-on-wet "splotchy" exercises and I decided this technique would work for irises.

So I did splotchy iris colors and some green leafy colors on wet paper. And then I looked at the splotches for about four weeks before I was brave enough to add to them. Finally, I decided to just draw the iris shapes over the splotches with pen and ink. Actually, it's not pen AND ink. It's just ink pen. I like those micro pens with the permanent black ink. Anyway, after drawing the iris shapes I looked at the painting again for about a week, and went in and added some background color, darkened the leaf shapes a bit, and quit.

Quitting is the hardest part. But I am learning how to stop while I'm ahead.
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