Flower number 3, The Crocus

Very quick painting of a crocus, not sure I'm very happy with it - looks a bit stiff, so I may rework it to give it more movement and shine. Movement in a composition is something that I've become more concerned with recently - I think that in botanical  painting it can get overlooked because of the focus on  technical accuracy.

Saturday's flower, Hellebore

I think this hellebore is White Spotted Lady.  It's never flowered before this year, which is odd because all the others in the garden have failed to show. I'd just about given up on it but perhaps it liked the hard frost we had this year. Next up the crocus.

More flowers 30 Day Challenge

It's about time I uploaded some of the flowers from my 30 day flower challenge, so here we go with a Iris reticulata hybrid, I think it's  'Katharine Hodgkin', which is quite a pale version. 
Also I have lots of the regular dark blue I. reticulata in the garden too, which I painted it for my SBA Diploma portfolio ( image below)  That was over a year ago and it seems like a distant memory now. It's good to paint it again and this one has to be my favourite iris. 

I spent about  40 minutes on this one, it's not the greatest painting but has a nice delicate quality.

'Katherine Hodgkin' 40 minute watercolour study

 

Botanical Illustration of Iris reticulata from the SBA Diploma portfolio. I think I sold this one, can't remember where though. It's a very dark purple so plenty violet diox and soem Indanthrene blue too