Iris

I love painting flowers.  Not the botanical sort, and wow do I applaud the artists who put that amount of work into their art.  For me though I really like filling my brush with paint, in this case my Kolinsky Round No. 10.   I found a great reference photograph on Ann Buckner's  blog  dated Friday April 22nd - do check out her blog it's full of wonderful paintings. 

This is the first wash which I left to dry completely

Then a slightly darker wash
You'll notice that the paint has 'bloomed', no pun intended!
(some call it a cauliflower - personally I quite like the effect)

Of course I can never leave well alone and decided to put a pen outline around the whole flower.  

Anyway,  I quite like this too.

and a close up for good measure.

Quite by chance it looks as though a leaf has grown through a petal -

a complete accident that seems to work 

which shows we should allow the paint to do its thing sometimes.

Thank you Ann for being happy for me to use your photo.