Negative space in a plant
I made this difficult for myself by trying to use dip pen and green ink. After a while I started to brush the ink on into background spaces. I finished it by defining some of the leaf outlines with a green permanent ink marker. I think I achieved the aim that the viewer would be in no doubt this is a plant, despite only colouring in the negative space. I thought the use of green in the background would help, though I think the subject would have been obvious whatever background colour i used.
Plants and flowers in coloured pencil
I drew the daffodils below from an arrangement on display at my local church. It took me a long time to do this and I though I do not think I did very well plus I am not keen on drawing flowers in a detailed way, I do think I achieved a 3d effect which was required.
I bought a Chrysantemum plant to draw. It was a mistake to do this as my mother always disliked the flowers and for some reason I have adopted this attitude. So I didn't start in the right frame of mind really and it was soo tricky as the flowers have so many petals and the leaves were all so close together. Had the task been to give an impression of the flower rather than attempt a detailed study I would have been ok. Below are two stages in the process of drawing this plant (of the second attempt of drawing it). I took very many hours and I didn't enjoy trying to capture the detail. In the end - I am sorry to say - I actually tore it up as it didn't get better than this.
