Drawing plants and flowers

Exercise Negative space in a plant

I enjoyed this exercise greatly and found that drawing negative spaces frees you from the idea of drawing what you ‘think’ you see and lets you draw what you ‘actually’ see.

I found that drawing negative space results in a more accurate drawing.  Space between leaves and the actual shape of the leaves are more true to life than if I had drawn it the other way around.

I like simplistic styles and contrasting black and white, so visually this type of drawing is very pleasing to me, even as a finished piece.

Exercise Plants and flowers in colour pencil

I started this exercise by sketching different flower heads using various methods of shading; blending, hatching, mark making.  I like using colour pencils and feel quite comfortable with them, it seems to be a medium I can control.  I like working in layers and building up tone and value slowly.

The flowers drawing for this exercise is a work in progress.  I have spent quite a few hours on this already but to do it justice it needs more time, which I fully intend to give a later date.

Exercise Drawing with other colour media

This piece was a mixed media experiment using oil pastels, watercolour and chink ink pen.  I started with a light pencil outline of each flower and leaf and then tried to work spontaneously mixing layers of oil pastel and watercolour.  I finished with pen outline when the piece had dried throughly.  I enjoy creating pieces that are more stylised and less rigid although I don’t pretend to have developed any style of my own yet.  I am beginning to appreciate that hours of practice and experimentation are essential to any success.

The above pictures were made using marker pens and soft pastels, trying to mix the mediums in one drawing.