Spring has finally arrived🌸 and that means it’s time to dust off the sunnies, open the sunroof and head to the flower stand to throw some color into your day!
Inspiration:
This piece in particular was inspired by my one and only, Mama Dowd! She had seen that I was doing a ton of black and white charcoal drawings and asked if I could make a piece for her that had a ton of color in it! My answer was obviously an excited yes, but what to make for her?🤔
Living in California, we are gifted with beautiful weather and lasting colors of flowers wherever you look! Whenever my mom and I go on walks together around the neighborhood, I always see her gravitating towards the flowers in front yards as we pass by. Instantly I decided to draw her her very own flower. I wanted to make sure that it was abundant in color and vibrant in life, just like she is💞.
Details:
I knew from the beginning that I wanted this drawing to be a close up depiction of a flower considering how I LOVE getting to dive deep into detail when working with charcoal.
My one hesitation however when working with color was whether or not I was going to be able to control the shadowing as much as I usually do when working in black and white.
When using black and white charcoal, you are able to achieve the 3-d effect through the highlights of the eraser and shadows of a dark pencil. I found that the answer to achieving the same magnitude of shadowing for color, is diving into the world of Complimentary Colors.
Complimentary Colors:
In order to achieve a realistic effect with colored charcoal, you must add hints of the object's complimentary colors into its shadow.
Here I used subtle bits of blues and greens to create shadows around the flower's stamen and behind the pedals of the baby flowers. Since these colors create such intense shadowing, I chose to only add it to a select few areas of the flower. For the rest, I chose to incorporate multiple anthers around these details as a way to round out the composition.
When capturing the inside of the flower's highlights, I mixed a light beige with an equally light pink to capture the roundness of its details. A pure white was used in the middle point of the detail as a way to show the highest point of the 3-d effect.
Flower Pedals:
Continuing the complementary color work from the inside of the flower, I added purple streaks to the low points of the yellow flower pedals guiding the eye to its layers. I still wanted to make sure that the vibrant colors would take over in this piece, so to amplify the layers, I added a hot- rod red with a strong orange. As a finishing touch, a pure white was added to the edges of each respective pedal to add some dimension to the piece.
This piece is a perfect opportunity to add a little color into your space. Place it in your craft room, home office or bedroom and let the high vibrations and sunny feelings shine through.
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