Hopefully, through this series of paintings with the Benton Iris ‘Farewell’ you will have understood how important it is to plan and prepare a painting from the initial composition , through tonal sketches, practicing techniques to finally the painting.

Because i believe that good preparation is the basis for getting a result in botanical art that I am happy with, I planned this year’s workshops to help others with this process. The next one is 23 -24 March and is all about developing the careful line drawing and using it as a basis for the rough tonal drawing. There are still places, so do get in touch.

But back to the Benton Iris. Actually as the painting has developed I have felt some sadness that there isn’t too much left. Obviously I also learn from doing it and this painting has been rather different to ones I have done before. It has been quite a large painting, it is on 640 gsm which doesn’t feel quite as smooth as 300 gsm paper. I used quite a bit of graphite so that the picture would not be heavy and doing this on the 640 gsm was not so easy. It was important to show all the intricacies of the plant, to get them absolutely right and to make it an attractive picture as well.

Some of the things that I had to include in the flower were:

• The view showing the Stigmatic lip. This is the view into the flower showing the sexual organs. look very closely inside the back of the flower and you will see a slight transverse ridge; that is the Stigmatic lip. The Stamen – male organ, is vertical, deep inside the flower and just below the transverse ridge. The pollinator climbs over the beard to try and reach the nectar deep inside the throat of the flower, gets pollen on its back and rubs it off on the stigmatic lip, fertilising the plant. You will see this view in more detail in the last blog.
• The view with the emphasis on the Standard and Fall petals (this blog),
• Buds developing
• The height of the flower spike.
• The height of the leaves particularly related to the spike.
• The top part of the rhizome.
• The growth habit (the fan of leaves)

This time my pictures show the development of one of the falls.

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

This is the final stage of the top flower. I will show you the complete painting in the next blog, so that you can judge whether or not the painting is successful. It is the viewer that determines this.