For general information about this 22"x30" colored pencil drawing, see this blog post.
For more information about the flower symbolism I used (Years 1-14) and life events that led me to select those particular flowers, see this blog post.
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My first "mini bouquet" for this new drawing is going to use the flowers plumeria & Queen Anne's lace.
Then I drew a rough sketch in graphite pencil of what I wanted the combination of plumeria and Queen Anne's lace to look like.
These are the botanical illustrations I looked at while I was drawing.
I do not own these two images; I found them on Google. Usually I do not like to do this - use other people's images as source material for my artwork - because I like the idea of my artwork being totally my own, and also I don't want to get in trouble over potential copyright issues. But for this drawing, I needed images that showed specific, botanical characteristics of the plants I wanted to use, so that it would be clear for each year what the plant was (and therefore, what the symbolism was). And I simply did not have the resources for all these different plants without getting on the Internet and finding some.
A lot of times artists do this - "copy" someone else's images by redrawing them. It's not considered plagiarism - it's "appropriation" or "pastiche." It's inspired by someone else's work, or uses elements of their work without using the entire image. I figured it would be fine for me to do for this particular large 22"x30" drawing because I was going to be 1) combining two different illustrations into a new composition, using elements of each type of flower but not the entire drawing, and 2) further combining all 28 of these 2-plant bouquets into a larger piece.
It's essentially like when you were writing a research paper in school, and the teacher asked you to find sources, list them in the bibliography, reorganize everything you'd researched into something "new" (even if it was made up of different parts that were, on their own, not new), and rewrite the other person's ideas in your own words.
Once I had my rough outline, I began filling it in. I started with the leaves of the plumeria, using two different green colored pencils to get the variations in shade.
I filled in the rest of the leaves, the brown stem, and a rough sketch of the plumeria, focusing on which parts of the plant had lighter white petals and which had darker pink petals.
At this point, I added in the Queen Anne's lace, so that I could ensure the plumeria wouldn't overpower the thin green stems of the Queen Anne's lace. I wanted to mark these in place before I finished the plumeria flower in the background.
Once the Queen Anne's lace was drawn and colored in with greens and whites, I returned to the plumeria to add the finishing touches to the petals.
Here is the finished piece:
This is only 1/28th of the entire drawing, but it's a good start! Year 1, in the upper left corner, is now complete. 27 more years to go!
For more information about the flower symbolism I used (Years 1-14) and life events that led me to select those particular flowers, see this blog post.
--
My first "mini bouquet" for this new drawing is going to use the flowers plumeria & Queen Anne's lace.
- Plumeria: symbol of life/birth, new beginnings, creation, positivity, perfection, charm, beauty, grace, and springtime
- Queen Anne's Lace: symbol of sanctuary/haven, delicateness/fragility, and complexity
Then I drew a rough sketch in graphite pencil of what I wanted the combination of plumeria and Queen Anne's lace to look like.
These are the botanical illustrations I looked at while I was drawing.
I do not own these two images; I found them on Google. Usually I do not like to do this - use other people's images as source material for my artwork - because I like the idea of my artwork being totally my own, and also I don't want to get in trouble over potential copyright issues. But for this drawing, I needed images that showed specific, botanical characteristics of the plants I wanted to use, so that it would be clear for each year what the plant was (and therefore, what the symbolism was). And I simply did not have the resources for all these different plants without getting on the Internet and finding some.
A lot of times artists do this - "copy" someone else's images by redrawing them. It's not considered plagiarism - it's "appropriation" or "pastiche." It's inspired by someone else's work, or uses elements of their work without using the entire image. I figured it would be fine for me to do for this particular large 22"x30" drawing because I was going to be 1) combining two different illustrations into a new composition, using elements of each type of flower but not the entire drawing, and 2) further combining all 28 of these 2-plant bouquets into a larger piece.
It's essentially like when you were writing a research paper in school, and the teacher asked you to find sources, list them in the bibliography, reorganize everything you'd researched into something "new" (even if it was made up of different parts that were, on their own, not new), and rewrite the other person's ideas in your own words.
Once I had my rough outline, I began filling it in. I started with the leaves of the plumeria, using two different green colored pencils to get the variations in shade.
I filled in the rest of the leaves, the brown stem, and a rough sketch of the plumeria, focusing on which parts of the plant had lighter white petals and which had darker pink petals.
At this point, I added in the Queen Anne's lace, so that I could ensure the plumeria wouldn't overpower the thin green stems of the Queen Anne's lace. I wanted to mark these in place before I finished the plumeria flower in the background.
Once the Queen Anne's lace was drawn and colored in with greens and whites, I returned to the plumeria to add the finishing touches to the petals.
Here is the finished piece:
This is only 1/28th of the entire drawing, but it's a good start! Year 1, in the upper left corner, is now complete. 27 more years to go!
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