Plants in Pen

A month or so ago during my painting class, I took a break from painting one afternoon to draw a spider plant that we have in a basket. With all the overlapping leaves, I had to focus one section at a time on just drawing what I saw rather than trying to figure out how all the leaves fit together and such. Unsure of how I wanted to finish the sketch, I left it like this for about a month.

Recently I came back to it and decided I either wanted to use pen or pen and watercolor to complete it. I traced over my pencil lines, which was more confusing than I thought it would be for simply tracing, but I got through all the twisty overlapping lines and finished the piece. At some later time I may go back in with watercolors, or I may leave it like this. Another idea I had was that since it looks almost like a coloring book style, I could print out pages of it to color with watercolors, colored pencils, pens, etc.

Pleased with the look of the pen for drawing plants, I decided to do another. This time I chose the celosia, or cock's comb, flowers sitting on our kitchen table. They're really interesting flowers, very bright and fluffy. We have one reddish pink one and two yellow ones... well, until a bird came in the window and apparently stole one of the yellow ones, that is. One night we had three flowers, and the next day we had two.

So anyways, I sketched out the reddish pink one, adding texture to it by using squiggly lines to indicate the fluffiness. I kept it relatively simple, indicating texture with short lines and showing a few of the veins on the leaves. I then went over it in pen.

Next I went out onto our small balcony and sat in a chair to draw the red geraniums sitting on the balcony ledge. I picked just a small bunch to draw rather than the whole plant and got to work. Towards the center of the flowers, I put the lines closer together to create darker spots that give the impression of depth.

Lastly, I recently worked on a plant-inspired piece for my art class that's more abstract. The goal was to create rhythm with line using pen. I decided to create vertical sections with textures resembling trees, overlapping the sections by making some darker with lines close together and some lighter with lines more spread out. At the end I filled in the center of each of the swirls to create darker spots that catch the eye. I think this piece could also be interesting to print out and color.

I've enjoyed creating these pieces and studying the details of the plants I worked on, and I hope to do a few more of the different plants we have in our house.