Iris 'Black Swan'
I have been waiting for two years for this to flower and now it has magnificently just when I am really busy! So I had to work quickly and I wanted to work larger than life. Initially (not having been on an Ann Swan composition course) I just drew out part of one flower but later regretted this and wanted to add two more but only have room for one. So much for forward planning!
I decided to work using Pan Pastels to do a quick underpainting applying this with baby oil (not an oil but dilute paraffin wax) blending the colours into the paper and reserving lighter areas using the Caran D’Ache Full Blender stick. But first I established the beard using a resist of Faber Castell White, Ivory plus a clear wax blender pencil, I later coloured the tips with Tom Bow Irojiten Olive Yellow and defined the stamens with a fine shadow line using a 0.3 propelling pencil.
Whilst the underpainting is still moist (baby oil stays moist for several hours depending on the ambient temperature) I work in the colours starting with a very dark shade colour, mainly black, layering up with Tom Bow Irojiten Mulberry and Plum plus Prismacolour Dark Purple. The lighter areas I have either left as white paper or glazed over the colour with Luminance Grey Violet and Tom Bow Lilac.