ILLUSTRATION - STEP BY STEP - ROSE PRACTICE!

Today I felt like practicing my shadows again. Drawing roses was the thing to do. I has been a long time, so there was a real need for that. I've made photos throughout the process, just as a note to myself; Nothing wrong with documenting some of my practice work as inspiration later on. Practice is to make things better, so I hope I'll be able to pull off more detailed shading in the future. That is what this practice is all about, but I have a real love for the tattoo style of drawing plants and flowers - because of the harsh/opaque outline work just like in graffiti.

This step by step post isn't how I did them back in the day. Inspired by another artistic blog, I'm trying to explain all my choices I've made below every photo. I've used a photo reference for detailing, but my drawing style is still to cartoonish for this type of drawing. I'm unable to reproduce it as realistic as I want, but yeah, 'practice makes perfect'.

As in almost every drawing, I start off with a sketch. I didn't want to upload the reference photo because the end result really doesn't look like the real deal, but there is only one advantage of sketching; It's the perfect way to get the basic lines of your idea on the paper. Just to be clear about the lines, I did put these in the spots where the shadow was the darkest of all.

At this point, I had to watch more closely for the basic shadowing; This part was done with pencils, and for the real deep tints I've used a red marker later on. To add quick shadows is important for me to sort of 'unlock the 3d features' in my project.

A more close up look at the coloring details. If you look closely you will notice that I tried to get a nice shade done with the marker, but because I only wanted to use 1 marker tint, after filling one leaf I realized this wasn't going to work how I wanted, so to keep it clean I decided to color the surfaces plain, the oldschool way. We'll do better next time, Seckie.

While coloring the cane I saw which direction this was going to.. Rather shiny, than realistic. But that doesn't matter, because thats the way I use to work. I can't blame myself for trying something different and just fall back in old fashioned ways of drawing, without any practice. Second thing is, I started drawing when it came to my head just a couple of hours ago, so I'm sorta content with what's happening on the paper now; Without any preparation this is all-right.

To finish this experiment, I wanted to see what opaque outlining does to such a soft and lovely object like a rose. I ran a fineliner over almost every line, and gave a quick pencil fade to get rid of the white in the background. When executing the right shadow we could achieve extra 3d, but that wasn't the main subject here. After a little white highlight we were done.

What I think, is that it is important to be able to reproduce the right shadows in the projects that need that little extra-dynamic feel. Though my work is opaque and filled with lines, proper shading could make things better - for real. Today, we gained one step to the destination; Proper Shading.

See you guys next time.

Seck1