Watercolour demonstration continued

Here I have completed the lower buds and stem from the upper iris. I decided not to go with my original plan for the leaves, but chose instead to keep the 'to the right' balance of the painting and added some leaves to the right side. These were made the same way as the first leaf, just using different colour mixtures. I lifted out the lights on the leaf while the wash was still damp. I like the resulting negative spaces better this way, plus I got to break into the space on the right between the two flowers.

This is a close-up of the completed top flower. In the shadow areas I had fun with warm and cool deep darks, puddling them in with juicy paint. It is nice to paint shadows full of colour. I also added some cast and form shadows on the flower itself.

This is a closeup of the lower flower. I added some light and shadow patterns to the front fall to make it more interesting. The last thing I did to the flowers was to add a very dilute yellow wash to the white of the petals, so you could feel the sunshine on them.

"Iris For Katherine", watercolour, 6 x 16"
SOLD 

This is the final painting, with all the pencil marks erased. I am very pleased that I was able to capture this beauty cleanly and oozing with colour. One of my students even bought it! Such a bonus.

This is the photo that I used as my reference. You can see that I took a lot of liberties with the negative shapes -they were just too equal in the photo to garner much interest. I also like my colour much better!

I hope you enjoyed this demonstration. Next week is my last watercolour class of the year, which is kind of bitter sweet. I will miss the students and their tremendous growth, many of them have become close friends. However, I will be glad to have only my own painting to plan for. I am happy to have done this little painting, as I am really excited about continuing to paint in watercolour.