Am more of a painter than a gardener, but these irises indeed were in my garden this spring. I think of irises as hardy yet vulnerable and "feminine" and frilly, sort of a reflection of who I sometimes think I am.
In any case, I like them and paint them each spring, always with mixed and different results. This year, I painted the first image in a quick sort of traditional way, adding the finishing touches with my new favorite brush, the lizard lick that Myrna Wacknov introduced me to.
I have been fiddling with Photoshop, experimenting with several of the "artistic" filters, and color enhancements, and came up with the following. Of course, it's fun to fiddle, but the benefit to my painting is it opens my mind to trying different color schemes, compositions, and ways to paint outside the box.
