Next to last Pink Iris of the season...
Clover-Iris Page
5" x 8 1/2"
Derwent watercolor pencils/wash, Pigma Micron pens, DS watercolor
Moleskine watercolor journal
All from life. Today the weather was too beautiful to stay inside so I got out into the front yard and painted the next to last pink iris in the front. It's actually even paler but it wouldn't have scanned if I'd done it the true nearly white color it was. Gorgeous flower.
I did it a couple of other times in my Goof Off Book too, along with two watercolor pencil studies of Ari and Gemini in the window respectively.
The color on the ones in the Goof Off Book page is much closer to what I have on the scan of the watercolor journal page. The cats were an experiment in using odd colors for shading them. I like how that came out. Don't always have to be literal. So this is the Cats-Irises Page for the Goof-Off Book, which is a 9 x 12" Strathmore Windpower watercolor pad I've dedicated to just fooling around with anything that can work on watercolor paper. I'm not as afraid to mess up things on the Goof Off Book.
The flu isn't as bad as it was yesterday though I'm still really tired. I may manage to make it through the day without napping. I'm trying anyway. This weather is too good to waste on sleeping through it.
I also wound up Author of the Month at my crits group, dreaming in ink. So May is going to be my month for writing and sending out short stuff, and maybe shipping out some novels too while I'm at it. I want to get back on the horse again after the miserable defeat of Script Frenzy... which I could not have done unless I had zero sick days. Ha ha ha. Never happen especially in springtime. Even here the changing weather knocks me down and with the flu on top of that -- forget it. I'll probably never do that marathon even if I get used to scripts just because of when it falls in the year and the impossibility of good health in changing weather.
These deadline things are supposed to be fun challenges, not the frustration of failure by way of getting sick too often. So if I get sick around this time of year, I should take it easy and just goof off when I can.