New Tinted Flower Notecards Set

In addition to finally getting some notecard sets designed, printed, and made available for sale in my Etsy shop from my "Flower Attributes" colored pencil series, I also finally got around to creating notecard sets for some older floral drawings.

This "Tinted Flower" set is comprised of six drawings completed in 2015 and 2016, on a mix of toned gray and toned tan paper. The original drawings were all 5"x7" in size. In each, I focused more on the shading of the flowers (highlights and shadows), rather than the color, adding only a bit of color once all the shading was in place, to give the drawings a desaturated look. It was a departure from the vibrant, highly saturated look I usually prefer, and not something I've done much of in the five years since (though I do really like how these notecards turned out, so maybe there'll be more of these in the near future!).

This pack includes the following 6 designs:

• Purple Tint (originally titled "Rose with a Hint of Purple")
• Aqua Tint (originally titled "Rose with a Hint of Aqua")
• Sepia Tint Duo (originally titled "Roses with a Hint of Orange & Yellow")
• Sepia Tint Trio (originally titled "More Roses with a Hint of Orange & Yellow")
• Blue Tint Sunflower (originally titled "Sunflower in Navy Blue and Yellow")
• Norfolk Succulents (the only one of the 6 designs with no color at all - the drawing was made using only black and white colored pencils, on toned gray paper)

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Love these notecards but wish you could swap out a few designs for some of my other floral drawings instead? I also have a U-Pick floral drawing listing available!

Flower Attribute Notecards - Red & Yellow Set

 I have several new notecard variety packs available in my Etsy shop, including new designs from my "Flower Attribute" series. This is the series I've been working on for 4 years now, naming each 8"x10" drawing with a single word attribute to describe the symbolism of the flower that is the subject matter of the drawing. These drawings are done in colored pencil, on black, gray, tan, yellow, red, blue, or green colored paper.

As with much of my artwork, I've been scanning each drawing as I go along, so the digital scans would be ready to print on notecards. And finally I've actually used those scans, created those notecard designs, packaged them in pre-selected notecard sets, and added them to my Etsy shop!

Today's blog post is featuring the "Red & Yellow" notecard set, which includes scans from the 8 colored pencil drawings I've completed on red or yellow paper.

The eight designs included in this notecard set are:

• Ambition (Hollyhock) on red paper
• Fertility (Pomegranate) on red paper
• Fame (Trumpet Flower) on red paper
• Vitality (Zinnia) on red paper
• Nourishment (Sunflower) on yellow paper
• Enthusiasm (Bouvardia) on yellow paper
• Jealousy (Marigold) on yellow paper
• Energy (Cattails) on yellow paper

Love the style of these notecards, but wish you could swap out a few for other floral designs I have? I also have a U-Pick listing where you can mix-and-match among all my floral colored pencil design and color options and build the perfect stationery set for your preferences!

Flower Attributes Series - Update

More than two years ago, I posted that I was starting a series of 8"x10" colored pencil drawings of flowers. Each drawing would be of a different plant or flower species and be horizontal in orientation; their titles would be a single word: one of the attributes given to that flower - a word that someone had, once upon a time, decided that flower would symbolize.

I'd made 3 drawings in 2017 before deciding to expand it into a larger series. These first 3 drawings were:

• "Endurance" (Succulents)

• "Anticipation" (Anemone)

• "Shame" (Peony)

At this point I stopped, did a bit of research, and made a list of which flowers I might want to include in this series, what colored paper I would use for that drawing (out of the stock I had - red, green, blue, yellow, gray, tan, and black), and what title I would give it. Since many flowers have multiple attributes that they symbolize, and many flowers mean similar things, I wanted to make sure I was choosing different titles for each drawing. The list grew to be a total of 69 planned drawings (including the 3 I'd already done).

That was at the beginning of 2018. In the two and a half years since then, I've completed 30 more drawings from that list, 24 which I've already posted here, each with their own blog posts:

• "Ambition" (Hollyhock)

• "Fertility" (Pomegranate)

• "Flight" (Birds of Paradise)

• "Playfulness" (Pink Hyacinth)

• "Prophecy" (Heliotrope)

• "Loyalty" (Daisy)

• "Nourishment" (Sunflower)

• "Enthusiasm" (Bouvardia)

• "Hope" (Button Pom)

• "Transformation" (Protea)

• "Constancy" (Bluebell)

• "Strength" (Ginger)

• "Resentment" (Petunia)

• "Justice" (Black Eyed Susan)

• "Whimsy" (Purple Carnation)

• "Immortality" (Acanthus)

• "Fame" (Trumpet Flower)

• "Vitality" (Zinnia)

• "Balance" (Enchanter's Nightshade)

• "Modesty" (Violet)

• "Fragility" (Azalea)

• "Union" (Myrtle)

• "Wealth" (Alstroemeria)

• "Luck" (Bells of Ireland)

I've also completed another 6 drawings so far this year, which I haven't had a chance to post on this blog yet (look for those posts coming soon)!

I still have a long way to go before I finish all 69, but now that I've completed almost half of them (33 out of 69), I thought it would be a good time to check in and see how they look as a group altogether. I'm loving this series, and excited to see what they all look like together at the end!

"Nourishment" Colored Pencil Drawing

I started this drawing in early July 2018, took a rather long break from it, and then picked it up again in late August, finishing it in early September. It's one of my "symbolism" drawings, where the title is a single word describing the symbolism of the flower being drawn, and the first such drawing I did on cadmium yellow Canson Mi-Tientes paper.

Earlier in 2018, I was in the habit of doing two of these drawings back-to-back, both on the same color of paper. (See: "Ambition" and "Fertility" on red paper, "Flight" and "Playfulness" on blue paper, and "Loyalty" and "Prophecy" on gray paper.) I had planned to do the same thing here, drawing "Nourishment" on yellow, and then "Enthusiasm" soon after. Instead, this "Nourishment" drawing took a lot longer than anticipated, and I couldn't even bring myself to start "Enthusiasm" for awhile. Wanting to continue the tradition of at least posting two same-colored-paper drawings in consecutive blog posts (even if they weren't consecutive artworks), I postponed posting "Nourishment" until I finally finished "Enthusiasm" as well.

I'm not entirely sure why it took me so long to complete these drawings, other than I got distracted with life and my heart just wasn't in art at all for awhile. I have a long list of these "symbolism" drawings all planned out and ready to go - a list of the flowers I intend to draw, the corresponding title, and the colored paper I plan to use for them - and in early July, "Nourishment" just happened to be next on my list.

I found a picture of sunflowers to use as a reference, and started lightly sketching in the yellow petals and brown centers.

And then, after about 10 minutes of work, I stopped.

When I started "Nourishment," I wasn't yet pregnant - but was hoping to be soon. I had a lot on my mind. If I had completed "Nourishment" in the time frame I usually do, it would've likely been complete long before I knew I was pregnant; instead, I procrastinated and stalled and got distracted, and for 7.5 weeks, this drawing sat around in this barely-started state. During that time, we started trying to conceive, and found out I was pregnant on August 10. We started telling people the news, and I made plans for my pregnancy. I didn't get back to this drawing until August 27 - at which point a drawing titled "Nourishment" seemed to be laden with so much more meaning. It felt like such an apt drawing to work on, while my body was busy nourishing a growing baby-to-be. It took me a few more days to finish, working on it a little bit at a time (for I was still not quite in the mood to focus on art), and I finally finished it on September 2.

First, I finished lightly sketching in the plants by adding in light green leaves.

Then, I started going in and adding depth and detail. I darkened the brown centers, and lightened the yellow petals with white and yellow colored pencils.

Then I darkened the leaves somewhat (though not adding much more dimension/detail to them, since I wanted the focus to be on the sunflowers themselves), and darkened the brown centers yet again, to heighten the contrast of the sunflowers.

The above picture is the completed drawing, complete with signature. Here are some close-up shots of the final drawing, below:

Five days after I finished this drawing I learned that I was having a missed miscarriage; six days after that, on September 13, I had my D&C. I understandably wasn't in the mood to create much art for awhile after that (for an entirely different reason than before) - and I especially wasn't gung-ho about starting the next symbolic floral drawing on my list, which was titled "Enthusiasm." I eventually worked on some other projects during that time instead, but I still kept putting off "Enthusiasm"... In January, I finally started and finished that second colored pencil drawing on yellow paper, which is why I'm posting "Nourishment" today. "Enthusiasm" will be the next post.