The Wonderful Word for Wednesday is ‘Bouquet’
Did you know that a bouquet of flowers holds ENDLESS inspiration for your creativity? Today I’m going to talk about MANY ways you can get creative with flowers AND I’ve included a free coloring page for you.
Since yesterday was Valentine’s Day, some of you may have bought flowers or received a bouquet of flowers. It’s a pretty universal gift for Valentine’s Day between family members, romantic partners, etc.
If you did not receive flowers, then get yourself right on down to the local grocery store and buy yourself a bouquet! And get something other than a dozen red roses, unless that is your favorite. I just have the opinion that the bouquet of red roses has been over used! Instead, get one that has a variety of shapes and tons of color.
If you do not have the funds for this or can’t get to the store, pic a beautiful image of a bouquet on-line or in a magazine for your viewing pleasure and for inspiration.
Here are the steps I took with my recent bouquet from the hubs (THANK YOU HUSBAND!):
Creative Step #1
Get rid of the plastic etc. that surrounds the flowers and separate them out on your counter.
Pick off any dead leaves or petals.
Get out one or two of your favorite vases and design your bouquet(s). Do NOT just stick the whole bunch in the vase as they came. No, no, no, NO! Cut stems off some of the flowers to create different levels in your bouquet and spread out the colors evenly throughout the bouquet. For mine, I separated the big green fronds etc. from the flowers:
Creative Step #2
Try your hand at a loose sketch of your bouquet. This does NOT need to be a masterpiece at all. Just use it as practice drawing what you see. When I approach drawing a bouquet, I first assess the size of the florals compared to the vase. In my case, the flowers were about the same size as the vase. This is how I know where to start on the paper – the vase goes on first and in my case will go about halfway up the paper.
*Pro-tip: use very light marks with your pencil. Don’t press hard!
Next I lightly sketch rudimentary shapes for each flower. For instance, the orange rose in front is close to a circle, so I drew circle about the right size. The pink rose off to the right is oblong so I drew an oblong shape. When I came to the little yellow flowers, some were squashed ovals, some circles, etc. The leaves are fatty rounded triangles. Like these descriptions? You’ll have your own I’m sure!
Just get the big generalities down in shapes and then go back and add in some of the details once you have the placements about right.
This creative step is the most challenging for me but I love giving it a go. It is a process of really ‘seeing’ your bouquet and of problem solving how to get a 3 dimensional image onto a flat piece of paper.
Can you see the first shapes I sketched for the flowers? Also, things are overlapping, the vase is wonky, etc. and none of it matters, this is just getting the basic layout down:
Creative Step #3
Now add color! You don’t even have to use the colors that you see! I chose to try to replicate the colors as I find it to be a good challenge and another lovely process of problem solving. I used watercolors but you can use colored pencils, oil pastels, acrylics, oils, whatever your little heart desires! Furthermore, I knew I was going to add ink as outlines so I didn’t worry too much about painting in the lines. This is a great way to avoid the perfectionism that plagues many of us.
*Pro-tip: use a kneaded eraser to roll over your sketch before painting to take off much of the lead (don’t worry, you can still see the image).
You can still see my pencil lines in this, but again, I knew I was going to go back in with a black fine liner and add in the details so these marks were actually very helpful:
Creative Step #4
When the paint is dray, grab a fine-liner, or whatever you’d like, and add in the details. I like to do mine loosely as I like that look, but of course, you do you! I also added a ‘table-top’ so the vase wasn’t just floating in this air.
I love how this turned out! It is precisely my style, loose and messy. I chose not to include the stems in the water and instead just painted the vase as if it wasn’t glass. Glass is hard to paint! These are the artistic liberties we get to take.
Creative step #5
For the fronds, I didn’t want to draw them, so instead, I got out my gelli plate and made a print of them. Don’t worry if you don’t know what a gelli plate is, I just learned what it was in the last year! Click here for a link to the one I use. When you use a frond on your gelli plate, you get two prints, the one when you place the frond on the paint and press your paper over the top and then pull it off, and the one after you take the frond off and press your paper over that. Pretty fun!
Creative Step #6
This step requires an iPad with an Apple Pencil and the program “Procreate”. If you have it, great, if not, don’t worry! Just stick in your mind for a later date if you happen to get those things.
For this, I upload the image of my bouquet into my procreate app, then in another layer, I painstakingly trace every details of my bouquet to make a coloring page. Here’s the end result:
I’ve included one for you if you like to color!
Creative Step #7
Well? What ideas do YOU have? I’d LOVE to hear yours! Just post a comment below so we can all get inspired from each other’s ideas.
Happy Belated Valentine’s Day friends! I appreciate each and every one of you!
Kimberly Snider, Virtuoso, signing off
Thank you sharing your talents will need to attempt this!