Still working with Wendy Hollender’s book ‘Botanical Drawing in Color’ I copied two of her drawings to try out her limited colours.  I tried a tulip, which I just drew out really quickly with graphite pencil and then coloured in following her step by step instructions.

Then I followed the instructions for a bunch of crabapples.

 

What I really noticed, was that she uses a much freer and more ‘sketchy’ way of applying the pencil to the paper, and looking closely at her images I can see individual pencil lines.  This method is much quicker than trying to eliminate all traces of the makers mark which is how I have been doing things previously.

I then went on to experiment with an original drawing of my own of a Pomegranate.

Now this was really fun to do, I loved building up the layers of colour, I loved the ‘scribbly’ speed of working and the texture left behind by working quickly and more intuitively.  I also like the depth and variety of colour.

So now, how to progress?  Hmmmmm………I guess it will resolve itself as I start into the second year of my blog and my more focussed attention on drawing.  I have more or less decided that I will commit myself to doing a drawing a day for 2015….and have reviewed Frederick Franck’s guidelines ‘The Awakened Eye’ from my post way back in June.