The First Iris Watercolor, Sketchbooks, Mail and thoughts on the subject.

 I always start with the envelope to loosen up and get some practice before I tackle painting the card itself.

  There are just 2 yellow Iris in my garden so it forces me to work quickly and not to take  them for granted. If I had a lot of them it would be easy to get lazy and think you had plenty of chances to work with them.

The reason that I don't work in sketchbooks is because there are so many people that like to get fun and interesting mail. They don't care if it's perfect, and sometimes they have suggestions to help me improve the work. In a sketchbook you're not accountable to anyone. In the mail people are likely to say "did you get a chance to paint that Iris? "

A failed drawing or painting can teach you something even if it's just "don't do THAT again and it helps keep your ego in check. In a sketchbook you can ignore it or destroy it. In the mail you have to deal with it.

The other good thing is that good or bad it's gone by the end of the day and I'm ready to tackle something else.

I was unhappy with this one but when I do a really good one I sometimes scan it and put it on products in my Zazzle and Cafe Press stores so that I can share them with even more people.