Painting orange irises step by step

I have painted some of my fave flowers. irises, in lovely shades of orange. 

As usual I shall show you the finished painting, then show you how it all came together, step by step.

 I am enjoying working on long rectangular canvases at the moment, as they give an opportunity to experiment with slightly different composition. Firstly I painted the canvas with a pale grey acrylic. I am never keen to work on white, as regular readers of this blog will know. I then drew my irises on with pencil. This was followed by a thin layer of white acrylic, using a small size 1 brush to outline the flower shapes. I never draw detail...I do it all with the paint.

Next I added some very basic colours to get a feel of the composition and colour balance.

After this I worked a bit more in to the individual flowers. I am using a mixture of Chromacolour paint and acrylic goauche. I am using size 2 and 4 brushes. I have put some bold stripes in the background using Paynes Grey. 

My next area of work is to break up the background with lots ( and lots! ) of dots and blobs. These need to mix together to soften the background. I am using a size 2 and 00 brushes to work in to the flowers. I am adding many layers of different reds, oranges and yellows.

My finished painting. I have removed one of the buds, and continued to work in to the flowers with many small marks. The background has about another million ( !! ) dots on it using shades of grey and deep blues. I have added some red violet in to the irises to increase contrast.

This one will appear at an exhibition later in the year. I have several booked up, but have yet to assign which paintings will go to which events !