Today’s picture is a sketch of an iris that I did in Portland, the helping drawing lines removed. I started with a triangle and built the flower sort of inside it and around it. This is a technique I use sometimes: Try to find a simple geometrical form and build the illustration within. The reason why you might want to brake a complex flower like Iris with its twisted and delicate petals into a simple form: It helps to get the proportions right. Then follows, at least in my hand, a simple outline of the main forms that I see, a few lines of where I see shapes forming and ending and then a few colors, to give it some depth.

Here you see the drawing with the triangle still there.

Iris, seen in Portland

I took this picture during my morning jog in Portland. Yep, I know, it sounds kind of freaky and geeky and so: I was jogging every morning, with my ipad, doing some exercises and sketching if I was in the mood and found a nice motive. This iris was right next to me when I did the back training and its perfume was absolutely stunning.

Suddenly it was there, a whiff of a fragrance that made me want to draw the flower. Funny enough, while sketching it for 20 minutes or so, I kept on thinking that actually, the scent was a lot like orange blossom, not indolic, but clean, slightly pungent. I continued thinking that it contained a lot of irones. And I thought that there was a vanilla, gourmand side to it, too.

In my head, I ended up with a triangle of methyl- 2- naphtyl ketone (aka oranger crystals, orange blossom, IFRA restricted), Irone alpha, Ethyl vanillin (strong, flowery vanilla).

I guess drawing a picture and creating a scent is similar. It is all about proportions, contrasts, light and colors and patterns. I guess I will follow this triangle a bit in the coming weeks. But first things first: getting back into rhythm, getting orders out, and filling those air du désert marocain bottles. Yehaw!