A Trip to an Iris Garden - with friends!

This year I went to sketch at Nola's Iris Garden with a plan to paint irises. I brought with me a backpack full of materials that I put together thinking about my list experiments (and not about irises), and I was joined by two friends who created some amazing art - here are two posts by Suhita Shirodkar: gouache and watercolor and watercolor and ink (and pencil? :). And here is a link to a pastel piece by Jennifer Gaskin. 

Apart from an amazing range of irises I had a great time looking at inquisitive cows, watching a hummingbird take a bath, and following all sorts of mad killdeer activities (I think there was a nest near the place where we were painting - hence we witnessed a whole array of professional attempts at discouraging us from being there. The poor distressed bird was running around us, calling in different tones, pretending that it had an injured wing, running away, flying erratically etc.). 

I got a couple of first sketches out and then went to my list of experiments and tried about 1/2 of them. My idea was to to use different materials to find an illusive textured line feeling that I am after as well as a combination of background and foreground textures and opaque/transparent feeling. But it all meant that I spread my attention over too many things and was able to finish only one sketch (and a half)  - the rest came home to be added to a pile "try and make something out of it" :)