Exercise 6

A rose by any other name

Chose a house plant, a cutting from the garden or a bunch of flowers. focus on a small area and draw what you see. Be as accurate in describing shape, form and details as you can. Aim to create a drawing from which somebody else could recognise your plant.

Now, draw the plant the again, this time from a much more creative perspective. Describe the plant but in simpler and bolder terms. You might want to play down your use of colour, line and form, for example. You’re drawing should try to summarise the essence of the plant, so it becomes more universally recognisable rather than a specific specimen.

I got some flowers from the local supermarket, some carnations I would have like them to come out in bloom a bit more than they had done after 24 hours in water, but I started to sketch some of the buds anyway to get started.

I sketched in my sketch book one of the flowers and a bud, I then went on to sketch in black fine liner to get a better outline.

I started with the bud first then went on to draw the flower again, the flower was not fully out in bloom, but at least some of them had come out more and you could see the petals better.

I then went onto colour the sketch above in Procreate, I scanned in the sketch to my computer so I could colour it, I decided to use the pencil as texture for the drawing, I wanted to not use watercolour brushes, and try something different, yet I still wanted to get a realistic look to the Carnation.

The hardest part was blending the yellow colour and the reds and pinks of the petals to make it look realistic, after a few goes I managed to overlay the pencil colours enough for this to blend together to get a natural look.

I finished this Carnation then went onto make a stylised version, again I used Procreate for this, this time I drew a few Carnations to get a fuller picture, I used the technical brush in the inking palette, this gave a bold rounded effect.

I then used just one colour for each element, the stalk, the green petals and the flower petals, without blending this gave a graphic style, which was kind of the opposite of the first drawing which was realistic, delicate and fragile. This look was vibrant, bold, graphic, and solid looking. I thought this contrast was good and showed the creativity you can play with on one style of digital software, it also put into play a similar idea of the illustrator in the research.

I think the final art work still looks like Carnations even in the graphic style, the shapes are still the same as the real flower.

I really enjoyed this exercise, this is my comfort zone as I love to draw flowers, I must admit I have not done botanical illustration before, where it is really realistic so that was a new experience for me, but I really like doing it. I found I’m becoming more confident in Procreate and digital drawing, I have experimented with the different brushes, and found contrast between the more traditional and more modern textures.

I like the two paintings I produced and will defiantly be trying these ideas out again, and practicing both botanical illustration again, and turning my traditional work into graphic bold styles too.