A Peek In My Sketchbook: Floral Sketch With Colored Pencils
Today was the minor fast called the Fast of Gedaliah, which always takes place the day after Rosh HaShana, and whose timing is excellent after all those festive meals! While fasting and catching up on some computer work after 3 plus days of being unplugged, I came across a few photos of the oleander blooms in my container garden, and was overtaken by the need to draw the flowers, using the photo as reference, and so I did, as I am committed to keeping my art journal/sketchbook practice alive and well. So I grabbed the large journal I’m currently working in (I also have a smallish watercolor paper landscape journal for more painting oriented explorations) and a pencil and started sketching with confidence. Having spent so many hours drawing flowers in my sketchbook, (take a look at all those posts here) in accordance with tutorials from various bullet journal experts, and a few how to draw books, I now feel like I’ve really gotten to a place where I feel confident about my drawing skills, which is a great feeling! Now if I can just take that into a painting practice, maybe I’ll at long last be able to paint those paintings of my dreams? As I always like to mention, developing a sketchbook practice is a great way to bring some creativity into your life daily without having to committ to a big chunk of time, and that consistency is what counts, and ultimately helps us achieve the results we desire in art practices that do not take place in a journal, unless of course that is your art practice! Okay, lets take a look at the simple steps involves in drawing a quick floral sketch and adding color with colored pencils!
The photos that initially inspired me was the one on the left, so with pencil in hand I started sketching that bunch of flowers. Truthfully I could have done it off the bat with a pen, but starting with a pencil was a bit more approachable as I have not drawn for a while. Once I had drawn the bunch of blooms in the photo I realized I needed some more reference to add more flowers to the sketch, so I pulled up the photo you see on the right which has different examples of how the blooms look when closed etc. Once I was happy with my sketch I went over the pencil lines in a .4 fineline pen, and added the words at the bottom.
I could have stopped here, but the sketch obviously needs lots of definition and contrast to bring it to the next level. At first I had thought of just drawing small details with a finer pen, a .2 fineliner, but after adding a few details here and there I decided to add some cheer with colored pencils. I think colored pencils are largely under rated today, as markers stole the show from them, but they can produce something much more artful than is possible with markers, which generally over-saturate everything. And you can blend colors with colored pencils as well as layer colors and speckly them together, so give the humble colored pencil a try, especially if you have a journal like mine, with paper that can not accommodate markers. (In a previous journal I used markers and simply glued pages together, which is also an option.)
Here is the journal and the exact supplies I used. I don’t have a good collection of colored pencils, but rather a mix of many brands, which I told myself I must use up before buying more art supplies! (And I have a feeling I have more colored pencils somewhere as when I studied interior design we used them for rendering, and I certainly did not toss them.)
It is true, my rendering with the colored pencils could have been quite a bit more developed, but sometimes quick and simple is the way to go, especially when, as I keep saying the whole point is to not invest so much time that the sketchbook practice is not sustainable!
So dear readers, take ten minutes or so to sketch some flowers in pencil, go over those lines in pen, add color with colored pencils, and voila, a floral sketch is born!
