Drawing flowers is an enjoyable challenge for any artist.
Flowers can be intimidating subjects for any artist, but once you reduce the flowers to their respective hidden shapes, it's easy to create and draw beautiful pictures that will bloom forever on your paper, drawing pad or walls.
Instructions
1. Examine your flower subject and take careful notice of its shape, size and details. Is the blossom delicate and tight, like a rosebud or tulip? Or big and blousy, like a hibiscus, open rose or lily?
2. Take equally careful note of the stem and leaves. Is the stem sturdy or delicate, smooth or thorned? Are the leaves round or pointed, rough or smooth around the edges?
3. Lightly sketch the basic shape at the heart of your flower blossom. If your flower is a bud, start with the small oval at the top of the bud, and pair that with a larger circle a few inches down to make up the bottom of the bud. If your blossom is larger and more flamboyant, start with a wavy circle for a rounded blossom, or a gentle starlike shape for a lily or similar bloom.
4. Add details to your blossom, working from the outward edges to inner petals. For buds and tulips, connect the top and bottom of the bud, and gently shade inward and upward. Add a gentle swirl in the oval at top to suggest the fold of leaves for your bud shapes.
For large blossoms, lightly sketch the center of the blossom to suggest the heart of the flower, then add petals in gentle half-circles overlapping from center to outward edges.
5. Draw a vertical line gently down from the blossom to begin your stem, then pair it with a second line to complete your stem shape. The lines do not need to be straight, and in fact should be subtly uneven as they would be in nature. Add leaves to your flower by gently sketching pointed ovals that gently come from the flower stem and curve upward toward the blossom.
6. Sketch in the details, working more heavily with your lines, while adding lines and shadows to your petals and leaves to frame your emerging flower. Add shadows and shading by working lightly with your pencil, then smudge gently with your fingertip in selective places for definition and visual interest. Finish the image by sketching and defining around the edges of flower and stem, and by adding points of light using the pencil eraser on the tips of petals and leaves.
