Apple-Pine: iris

Showing posts with label iris. Show all posts

Slow-Opening Irises

I recently found a gift of wonderful bouquet of irises waiting for me on the table. They sat closed for the first couple of days and then opened one by one as I was sitting at the table, finishing some sketchbook catching up and having tea - they managed to change completely between two cups and that was the very first page of my sketchbook 166 :) (Usually I draw my current tools but I think this was very appropriate thing to catch in my daily drawn documentary :)

Iris Garden at the End of the Season

I made another trip up into the hills to see the irises at Nola's Iris Garden. The place was as magical at the end of the season as it was at the beginning. Different colors of irises were blooming, there were very few people, and a perfect bench for painting a whole field of flowers with the hills was found. It was quite a spontaneous outing and al always not long enough, but a perfect day. I spoke to a human organizing iris rhizomes for selling and got a couple of fry flowers to bring home and sketch later. Click on the image to see more notes from the day.

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" :)

A trip to the Iris Garden!

Irises are one of my favorite flowers (though after I typed this I paused to list other favorite flowers for myself and now am over a dozen). For a few years now May means an outing to Nola's Iris garden! Suhita (https://www.instagram.com/suhitasketch/) joined me this time again and we had a chance to look both at the flowers as a field of color on top of the hill and as individual beauties. I tried my new resist crayon and went from some very quick studies to a longer landscape piece to some more detailed portraits of the flowers - wondering about names for these colors and how to find a balance between trying to depict a spirit of the iris and a feeling of the flower that others can recognize later.

Here are some process photos. And a couple of little videos I posted on Instagram - where you can hear birds and see the sketch with resist and where you can see more of the garden.

I wish the iris season was longer! Perhaps I still have a chance though :)

What is on my table? Beginning of May 2021.

April went completely not the way I planned but I painted a lot of portraits and flowers.

Measuring Time with Flowers - part two

Here is the first part:
https://blog.apple-pine.com/2019/02/measuring-time-with-flowers.html
And here is second:

Measuring Time with Flowers

While organizing my files at the beginning of the year I realized that one of the ways how I measure my time is by the things that happen every year - but not at predictable dates.

Birthdays, seasons, the rhythm of school, public holidays - all create a backdrop. And then there are things that happen every year but you almost never know when exactly they will happen. The first duckling in the park. The first cherry tree to bloom. Last rain of the winter. Each time I got to run in my winter gear.

One of these things are flowers - most of the bouquets in my life appear unplanned and unexpected. I am not a big fan of obligatory flower gifting but I love flowers and people around me know this. So I get all kinds of amazing and exotic bouquets (my friends gave me once a bouquet of carrots for my birthday) and measure my time by them.

These are sketches of the first bouquet of 2019. I will post more of them soon.

Sketchbook #114: Iris Garden

My painting friend posted about an iris garden in my area and a visit there was immediately put on the list of plans. By the time plans became reality it was an end of the season but the garden did not disappoint: tons of colors and fragrances assaulted me from the beginning. Plus there were ponies to look at, a bunch of rusty cars, a donkey (whom I did not see but heard pretty well) and just beyond the garden - running freely in the field was a beautiful horse with a foal.
But back to the irises - I could not decide on what to paint and then just sat in one spot on top of the hill and turned around me when I needed a new flower to paint up until it was time to go. I have to tell you though - people who name these irises are really funny! (Amethyst Flame, Barocco, somebody's Glory, another's flow, and so on and so forth).