The focus of today’s sketch.

Saturday Floral Sketch

I had a chance to do a quick floral sketch of some of our flowers this afternoon. I have a feeling that part of what’s been giving me problems when it comes to floral sketches is that I’m trying to make everything work all at once, without knowing particularly what I’m doing. So this time I really focused on the white flower, and a few of the violas next to it.

I’m not even trying to get all the details really - I’m trying to get the general feel of the flowers. I decided to mostly ignore the overall composition - the surrounding colors are just there to help provide context for the flowers. I think it’s progress, skill-acquisition-wise. But it’s slow, and there isn’t a painting session like this where I didn’t wish I magically understood floral painting and could just knock them out perfectly every time.

A broader view. You can see what I mean by ignoring the overall composition in favor of getting the essence of the central flowers.

Alas, that hasn’t once yet happened to me. I guess I’ll just have to be glad that the process is interesting to me, and content myself with incremental gains and a slow building of competence.

-ZR