A Floral Spotlight: Each Iris Has Its Own Personality

When it comes to painting irises, Cathryne Trachok says having an underpainting was helpful. See why in this Painting of the Week spotlight:

On Painting “For They Shall Inherit The Earth”

By Cathryne Trachok

This was one of those – “let’s give this a shot and see what happens” paintings. I actually do that a lot. I love the exploration of my subject matter, and I love to start it off with a bit of mystery on how it will turn out.

To me, flowers lend themselves to this approach. I will spend time drawing them out, playing a bit with the composition, working from a photograph or two, to see if I like the sketch to start out with. Then it becomes a challenge to see if I can make it work when I add the color.

After doing the line drawing onto the canvas, I do an under-painting to get an idea of the overall composition/value structure, and to see if I need to modify any of the flowers.

In this painting, with all the irises so close together, the underpainting was really helpful in separating them out. Each flower has its own personality, so it was like doing a portrait of many different little ones on a playground. I wanted to make sure I got the sense of the individual flowers without losing the whole sense of an iris field.

As I was finishing, I was thinking how cool it is that these incredibly ornate flowers don’t boast about their beauty. And how every spring they keep coming up, and their territory grows with each rhizome. It made me think of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth,” and then I had my title.

Connect with the artist at www.cathrynetrachok.com.

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