Drawing Plants

Plants and flowers inspire me to draw!   My goal is to have the plant drawing look realistic.  I enjoy the challenge of drawing the leaf shapes, stem textures and flowers that is unique to each type of plant.  When drawing plants without the element color, there needs to be a variety of line, dots and value to create interest in the drawing.  Living in Florida provides an opportunity to have a backyard fill of different types of plants and flowers.  The plant above is one of my favorites, it is part of the cactus family and is called a Crown-of- horns with Euphorbia Milii as the Latin name.

Before I start my drawing, I   break down the plant into smaller parts, noticing the leaf shapes, the stem textures and the flowers.

• Leaves  have several qualities to emphasize.  Showing their unique shape, use two lines to show  the vain, adding a floating quality, overlap each other and adding the imperfections such as brown areas all gives the plant a realistic look.
• Stems  need to have the texture drawn and the way leaves are connected to them.
• Flowers are fun to include with their different shapes and sizes.  This aspect adds another interesting element to the plant image.
• Container have a variety of shapes and decorative features.  This is away to add new textures and patterns that are a contrast to the ones used in the plant.  I often design my image starting with the container and finding a plant that provides the proportion and shape that works best.

Chapter 6 in my book “Exploring Perspective Hand Drawing, Fundamentals for Interior Design”  provides more information on drawing plants.