Iris Botanical Ink

                                                    'Iris with bud'     iris botanical ink

I painted this while the Kitchen Table Art Project was live on Wed 3rd June #kitchentableartproject
This project began during lockdown and was weekly. It continues but no longer weekly. details and PDFs with info are available from the link above. They have been recorded and are on Youtube
I also worked on another iris painting, that will be in the next post.

It has been a good year for irises in my garden. I bought Iris Titan's Glory some years ago as I read that it performs and lasts really well. It's taken a long time to get going, maybe I should have split the clump sooner and given it more tlc. I split the clump into 3 last year and each piece has produced  lots of flowers so worth the wait. Its a tall and very fragrant bearded iris.

When the flowers went over the colour became more concentrated. The photo shows the dye that oozed out onto a paper towel.

 

The greenish areas are where I added some salt.

 I had a go at making some iris ink. I did 2 small batches. For the first one I steeped the spent flowers in surgical spirit for a day or 2 and drained of the liquid into a little pot. The smell isn't great. I went on a herbal course long ago and remember making a calendula tincture using vodka so I used that for the second batch, the smell of this extract is wonderful. I am not a fan of vodka and much prefer Champagne or a G&T

Please note If you make it don't be tempted to put it in a cocktail as iris flowers are toxic.

The image at the top of the post shows the ink painted onto Saunders Waterford paper and the colour has stayed vivid.

Below The paper used makes a difference.

below
I also tried it on  a cheaper watercolour paper. The colour was good when I first touched it to the paper but became more greyed down losing the saturation of colour and the ink sat in puddles.

The ink made with surgical spirit came out rather grey on paper.
For my next experiment I will take a little ink and add salt to see if I can get a green for the iris leaves.
I don't suppose the ink will be very colourfast but fun to use for greetings cards. Or you could experiment with a layer of UV protection painted over it but not something i have ever tried.