Drawings: OCA Part 2 IV: Project - Drawing Plants and Flowers

Exercise: Negative Space in a Plant 

Second Drawing

Biro - A3 Paper

 

First Drawing

Pencil - A3 Paper

 

Flowers and plants are certainly not my favourite subject which is probably why it has taken so long to put these pieces on my blog, I am ashamed to say that I think this lack of enthusiasm for them may show in some of my drawings.

I did find the first exercise quite interesting and it was quite a systematic procedure of just filling in the gaps once the features were planned out. I definitely prefer the second piece in biro; it is more interesting to look at and to complete, probably because it fills the page a lot better than the first.

Coloured pencil is also far from my favourite media to work in so needless to say the combination hasn’t produced my favourite results. I started the A2 piece and right from the beginning I really did not favour this piece one bit, this definitely shows unfortunately. I did come back for a second go, returning with a vengeance and a few sunflowers. I had a lot more determination to produce something better this seems to have worked. I tried a smaller scale and thought about the colours beforehand.

I found some interesting flowers in my garden and did some studies in coloured inks to start the third exercise, I quite like the piece with the three red flowers (I believe they’re tulips) but have mixed feelings about the other results. I experimented with combing coloured pencil with charcoal to produce the very dark piece with the poppies and the jug, the colours work well and I am satisfied with the shading.

 

Exercise: Plants and Flowers in Coloured Pencil. 

 

First Drawing - Poppies

Coloured Pencil - A2

Second Drawing - Sunflowers

Coloured Pencil - A4

Exercise: Drawing with other Coloured Media

 Tulips

Drawing Inks - A3

Daffodils

Drawing Inks - A3

Tulips

Drawing Inks - A3

Flowers in Stone Planter

Drawing Inks - A3

Poppies and Jug

Coloured Pencil and Charcoal - A4

 

Hanging Plant

Drawing Inks - A4

Learning Log

How will your experiments with negative space help your observational drawing in the future?

Concentrating on the negative space has helped me to understand how objects, like plants with their tangled stems, interact on a two dimensional plane. It helped me to start drawing what was actually in front of me more than just what I thought I was seeing.

What techniques did you use to ensure you drew your plants in proportion?

On these particular exercises I would start by deciding on a single feature such as a flower head and from then on I would compare the scale of the other objects and adjust the accordingly. This didn’t always work spectacularly but in a way it did help to maintain the natural feel, like the drawings were growing from a point.

How did you achieve an effect of three-dimensional space in your drawings?

I am not convinced that I did successfully achieve the effect in all of my drawings. It is achieved in some of them where I have controlled the tones and shading to describe shapes and to highlight the features that recede into the drawing and those that project forwards towards the viewer.