A floral botanical illustration around the words of the famous poem and hymn by Cecil Alexander "All Things Bright & Beautiful'. Drawn in pen & ink with another on the way...'All creatures great & small.
Poppies are among my favorite flowers---vibrant AND delicate. Great swaths of "bread poppies" garnish our garden. We harvest seeds for lemon-seed cake and poppy-seed rolls. (No, we don't harvest that other stuff.) They reseed generously and we have beautiful crops of red and purple flowers each year. I've been working on this colored pencil drawing for the past week. Enclosed are some images of the progress over that time.
Meadhbh standing in front of a green wall. Simplified her hair and the leaves in the background a bit. Charcoal and pastel pencils on 9” x 12” Strathmore archival sketchbook paper, scanned into Photoshop. Model: Meadhbh
Magnolias are spring harbingers in our garden, as well as our annual ornamental cherry display. Star magnolias are over, tulip magnolias are in full swing, and the occasional Southern magnolia is starting. Perhaps I should have done this with a gouache paint, but I used colored pencils. Oh well. Outlined after with various sizes of Pigma Micron pens.
Our garden: www.edgewoodgarden.com
Annuals are encouraged to seed in the less formal beds in our large garden.
We tend them, photograph them, and I draw and paint them. This is a colored pencil (Prismacolor) drawing of one of our seedling poppies. It was an odd form. Not exactly a single, nor a double and lacked the common cross markings in the throat.
I modified the challenge a wee bit. I didn't use the same paper for the various drawings since I was using (top row, left to right) hard graphite pencils (3H to HB), watercolor pencils, (bottom row, left to right) brush pens and ballpoint pen. These media work best on very different paper textures and moisture absorbing qualities. The second picture shows the object of my study --- and the apparatus I use to hold botanical subjects. "Third hand" tools are very useful and cheap. This one was under $10 and serves my purposes well. Just FYI. (Each drawing/painting was scanned and composited in Photoshop.)
Colored pencil drawing of pomegranates "in progress." Prismacolor and Verithin pencils with some fine lines done with Tombow Irojiten pencils. I like the harder colored pencils for fine detail, but the blending of high wax and oil pencils can't be beat for blending.
Homegrown elephant garlic drawing done in graphite pencil (H and HB). I enjoy drawing little roots and entanglements---following each one to its logical conclusion. A little OCD, I know.