Stately Irises palette knife painting in oils

stately Irises palette knife painting

Oil on box canvas (1.5cm deep)

15x20cm (6"x8")

Available in my Etsy store

I love this time of year. After the tulips die down, the irises are the next to appear. As well as the dark blue border irises, these pale purple irises are amongst the first to appear. They are tall, and although not as showy as the bearded irises, they give a beautiful purple haze under the citrus trees.

About this painting
I painted this in a loose impasto style, dancing around the canvas with my palette knife, aiming more for the purple glow than true representation of the irises.

Some Close-ups of the knife work

Iris Dancing Queens, oil palette knife painting, Day 30, 30 days hath September challenge

Iris Dancing Queens

Palette knife painting

18x24cm (approx 7x10inch)

oil on canvas MDF panel

These irises are the first flowers that pop up in my spring garden. They are always a welcome sign that spring is arriving. I think I need to put in some sky (in this case wall) holes to give the irises some breathing space. Normally I would let the painting stand for a couple of days and paint the finishing touches before posting, but the as I am posting them immediately some will need final adjustments. I think the next time I am involved in a challenge I need to go smaller LOL

Iris Dancing Queens is the last of the paintings in the challenge. I started with a floral and finish with a floral. A big drum roll please ........ I painted 30 and posted everyday. It certainly was a worthwhile challenge to participate in, and a big thank you to Lesle Saeta for coming up with the idea and hosting everyone's entries. A welcome bonus of the challenge is that I have also got to see lots of other artwork.


I mainly concentrated on landscapes for this challenge so please visit my Joy of Colour blog to see the other entries. It wasn't intentional as I didn't have any plans at all and just painted the ideas that came to mind as time went on.

White Ice Bearded Iris oil painting

White Ice Bearded Iris

Oil painting by Marion Hedger

18x24cm, on canvas board (MDF) (approx 6"x10")

I have joined Daily Paintworks and this piece is for auction

THIS PAINTING IS NOW SOLD
Contact me to commission a similar painting HERE

Another of my Garden 101 series cross posted in my daily painting blog.

Mountain wild flowers - Pen and wash

These two small postcard sized paintings were painted for the October Plant Parade challenge in the wetcanvas.com floral forum. The challenge was to choose high altitude wild flowers to paint.
Both these paintings are of flowers from the Pyrenees Mountains. Doing these brought back memories of my holiday in the Pyrenees a few years ago. It was May and the mountains were covered in all sorts of tiny wild flowers - just breathtaking. In particular, the gentian was very striking with it's brilliant blue.

Blue Gentians

Pen and wash on watercolour paper

10x15cm (4"x6")

Mountain Irises

Pen and wash on watercolour paper

10x15cm (4"x6")

Spring Irises Acrylic Painting

Spring Irises by Marion Hedger

40x40cm (16"x16")

Acrylic on canvas

I started these irises in the spring of 2008 from life as these were growing in my garden at the time. I left it unfinished until recently as I was unsure of how to finish it. It was my first attempt at glazing with medium and I wasn't enjoying using the glazing medium. As I am used to using the acrylic straight from the tube, or thinning with water if necessary I found the glazing medium sticky and not very satisfying as a 'painting feeling'. I eventually finished it off by using water to thin the acrylic in certain areas and undiluted acrylic in the front flowers. In fact it did not need to do much more work on it as adding the highlights suddenly lifted it.