with and without

 

Bought a big mixed bouquet, but decided to tackle only the gladiolas.
 The second one I did first, with no preliminary drawing. I started at the top, and while painting the tops blooms felt I was really struggling against my brush--a very soft pointed round; I could not get crisp edges ... By the bottom blossoms, I was thinking, What's wrong with messy edges?
The top one, I put down a wash, then drew the gladiola over it. I like to draw gladiolas, the overlapping petals arising from the center, and the way the blooms shoot out of the stem.
But I wasted too much energy on trying to get the color of the blooms right--a bright yellow, melding into coral and edged with deep red--when that really doesn't matter. I normally don't care about such precision, but the loveliness of the blooms seduced me.
If I did a portrait of one bloom, I think the color would matter more; these are more about the stem of flowers than the precise color.