Line and Ink Flowers

Starting in July this year, I did a Skillshare tutorial for drawing flowers with ink. I’ve always wanted to try and draw flowers properly – every time I’d tried to in the past it looked more like a child’s drawing since I’d not taken the time to really study flowers and foliage, or to find ways to draw them that took into account the way the petals are shaped or the details in the centre of each flower. It looked daunting to me, even though I’d been drawing and painting birds earlier this year! Maybe it was the delicacy of them that looked so intimidating.

The Skillshare class is by Sharone Stevens, the author of two books, Watercolor For The Soul, and the upcoming How to Paint It. She has a number of classes on Skillshare, and this is the first one of hers that I’ve tried – Botanical Drawings for Beginners: How to Draw Simple Flowers.

The tutorial focuses on the basic pre-shapes (generally three – a large oval, a more compressed oval, and then a half-circle) and then filling in the ovals or half-circle with the different kinds of floral petals, including different angles and the centre of each flower. It rarely touches on the shapes of leaves attached to the flowers or more advanced angles, but she encourages the student to go away and experiment using these simple forms to adapt them to different angles and sizes.

For this class I used three different Pigma Micron pen nib sizes – the 02 for drawing, 005 for fine details, and the 08 for thicker areas needing to be filled in. I did attempt to try out my new Sailor Fude de Mannen pens for one of them, the cosmo flowers, but found them too scratchy for the paper I was using (if interested, I’ve been using a Talens Art Creation Sketchbook for practicing ink drawing, the paper is smooth and has a nice thickness of 140 gsm).

I haven’t done the final project yet – a hydrangea – partly because it’s a bit too intimidating so far – so many small petals with different angles! – but I’m sure I’ll give it a go soon.

Pansies:

Cosmos and Anemones:

Daisy and Echinacea:

Tulip and Daffodil:

Poppy and a bonus of Daisies in progress:

I’m looking forward to getting back into doing some art this month – I’ve been craving playing around with watercolours and inking in some pencil drawings!