The Wonderful Words for Wednesday are “Tracing and Inking Flowers”
Most people who consider themselves ‘Creatives’ (which many of you do, but also many of you don’t and therefore you need to read my previous BLOG post on this topic) are addicted to classes and tutorials of all kinds.
We can waste an entire day scrolling YouTube, Instagram, Skillshare, Pinterest, etc. for tutorials and going down all the rabbit trails. Some will be stuff you already know how to do, but you pick up little tips and tricks along the way as you watch.
BUT, sometimes you come across a class that open up a whole new world for you. This is what happened when I recently found Gemma O’Brien’s class on Skillshare called ‘Illustrated Lettering: Drawing Intricate Floral Forms’.
It really resounded with me because of the issue of tracing. I am currently working on publishing a Skillshare class on photographing flowers in the wild and then tracing the images to learn the details of each flower. Tracing seems to have some shame around in the art world, but I’d like to get rid of that ridiculousness!
Gemma, who is a very accomplished artist, traces her floral compositions before inking them and adding depth and detail in her final composition. I followed her process and LOVED every minute of it. The final product was stunning and I am so proud of it! This piece took hours of work and it should be noted that even though there was tracing involved, the work was my own from sketching the letter, to picking the flowers, to composing the image, to
Here’s my process after taking her class:
Step 1: pick flowers, leaves, berries, whatever toots your horn, from your garden or someone else’s (with permission of course!).
Step 2: View different font types and draw an outline of your chosen letter.
Step 3: Fill it out with the flowers you picked and take a pic.
Step 4: THIS is where I deviated from Gemma’s process. She printed out her black and white image and then traced it with tracing paper. I uploaded my photo into Procreate (a digital drawing app on iPads) and traced my image in a new layer then printed it out:
Step 5: Ink your design assign shadows, depth, and more details to fill out your design.
This final step took me 2 days and was my absolute FAVORITE part. I can’t wait to do more! Imagine the possibilities!
ANYONE can do this. So check out Gemma’s Skillshare class for more in-depth directions on this project, she’s amazing.
Kimberly Snider, Virtuoso, Signing off
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