"Class Bouquet (Stronger Together)" - In Progress 5

This colored pencil drawing uses flower symbolism to represent the entire spectrum of social class from poverty to wealth and everything in between.

To read about capitalism and the growing disparity between the lower and upper classes, visit this blog post.

To read about the symbolism of each flower used in this bouquet, visit this blog post.

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I've already completed six flowers - the hibiscus, bells of Ireland, hollyhock, sunflowers, French honeysuckle, and dandelions. Today's post will focus on the next six - starting with lupine.

For the purple lupine in the upper right corner, I used a white colored pencil for highlights, yellow-green and green for the stalks and leaves, light purple for the petals, and magenta and blue colored pencils for shadows.

For the group of blackthorn blossoms, I used white, yellow-green, tan, two shades of red, and black.

In the middle of the bouquet is this group of flowering cacti. I used two red pencils, pink, white, yellow, three green pencils, and black.

Off on the left side of the bouquet, I next worked on these myrtle flowers, with black, two shades of brown, red, pink, cream, yellow, white, and two green colored pencils.

The tansy flowers below the myrtle got built up with orange, yellow, white, black, and three shades of green.

Finally, I worked on this trio of marigold flowers. I used white for the highlights, dark red for the shadows, and orange and yellow for the petals. I also employed two green colored pencils for the leaves.

My drawing is now halfway complete! I now have a dozen more flowers to finish up.

"Class Bouquet (Stronger Together)" - In Progress 2

This colored pencil drawing uses flower symbolism to represent the entire spectrum of social class from poverty to wealth and everything in between.

To read about capitalism and the growing disparity between the lower and upper classes, visit this blog post.

To read about the symbolism of each flower used in this bouquet, visit this blog post.

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As is typical with these 19x25 colored pencil drawings, I first planned out the composition for this second-to-last drawing on newsprint. Once that plan was in place, it was time to move on and lightly sketch the flowers onto black paper. Today's blog post will look at the first dozen flowers, and the initial sketches I did on black paper as I started to slowly build up the bouquet.

I started with the pink and green flowering cactus in the middle of the drawing:

Then added yellow kingcups below that:

And marigolds:

And yellow carnations off to the right:

Above the cactus went in a clump of dandelions:

These white blossoms are blackthorn flowers:

Over on the left side of the drawing, I added in yellow tansy:

While the orange coronella dahlia went in on the right side:

Next, I sketched in a duet of pale pink peonies:

Filling out the left side, I added in some white myrtle flowers:

Pink French honeysuckle were drawn in above the myrtle:

And finally, in the upper left corner, I sketched in some yellow hibiscus:

This is half of the bouquet sketched in. Check back again in a few days for another blog post on the next twelve flowers. Then, once everything is sketched in, I'll start going over with more color, adding dimension and detail throughout the bouquet.