And......Back To Flowers

Iris Abstracted.  Watercolor & Crayon.

Last night, after I painted Iris Abstracted, I bit the bullet and started cleaning my John Pike palettes. The last time I needed to clean out a palette, I just bought a new one!  That was not a great precedent, but it was incredibly easy. To get one of the wells cleaned out required many minutes in the laundry tub, an attack with a toothbrush, and then attention with water, q-tips, brushes and paper towels.  You might understand why I've been putting it off.  I have one palette fully cleaned out, and the other needs work.  You'd think they'd design a palette that doesn't have so many crevices.  (As the mom of two middle school boys, I frequently have the same thoughts about toilets....  if you don't know why I'm thinking that, you don't really want to know, and as a future service, it would probably be a good idea if I made the boys responsible for cleaning their own/guest bathroom....)


Now, I'm thinking about colors, and what I should put out.  A John Pike Palette has 20 wells--I'm feeling positively giddy with choices.....

About the Iris--when I started I was thinking about an old photo I took at my mother-in-law's house in 2005 (below).  This is part of a hedge row--my mil loved flowers, and she had all sorts of things growing around her house, which is located outside of Cape Girardeau, MO.  Obviously, the photo is of bachelor buttons (which my own grandmother also loved), and the painting is of Iris (kind of), but the point  was how the flowers moved across the page (didn't get that).  The line of the stem (check!).  And the colors (no, again).  In my defense, I looked at the picture in the afternoon, and painted much later in the evening, and never referred back.

I like bachelor buttons, too.  If I remember, I'll throw some seed into my own hedge row this spring.