I’ve been getting a lot more time to myself due to me switching from one of my jobs to another and I’ve been trying to use that time to create more. Since I was still in somewhat of a rut and I needed to get my creative juices flowing, I decided to look at previous work I’ve done when I was still in college and even before that period.
I ended up finding my collection of images I’ve shot with my smartphone and the one you see at the start of this post is the one I selected for my next drawing. To be honest, I don’t remember exactly when I snapped this photo, but I do remember me loving it so much because it reminded me of a sunflower.
I usually start my drawings with the basic outline of the subject and then slowly adding in details until it is where I want it to be. The outline of the flower was very tricky due to the amount of detail in the photos, particularly the leaves and stem. The actual flower center and petals were easy to create an outline for.
For the tool fanatics out there, I used the 3H, 4H, and HB pencils to create the general shape of the flower.
When I went to shade in the details of the flower, I started getting frustrated. The stem and leaves were sort of easy for me to blend the darker parts together, but the petals were the hardest. The way the sunlight hit the petals made some of them look like they had no shadows at all and I didn’t want that part of the flower to look flat. I did my best.
For shading and darkening areas, I used the B, 2B, and 3B pencils.
I’m still going to work on it some more, but this is what I have so far. I think it is quite an accomplishment for an extensively detailed subject like this and I’m proud of how better I’m getting the more I practice!
le fleur artsy 