Draw Simple Botanical Doodles Inspired by Pressed Flowers

1. Introduction: Sketching plants from a reference can be overwhelming. Capturing their three dimensional nature with a multitude of leaves, petals, stamens, and sepals is not easy when you're a beginner and don't know where to start. In this class, I will show you how to derive joy from observing plants and simplify their characteristics, so you can feel more confident when drawing them. Hi, my name is Ewa Rosa and I'm an illustrator, embroidery artist, and Top Teacher here on Skillshare. Lately, I've been obsessed with gathering and pressing wildflowers. Creating botanical compositions in floating frames became my favorite summer pastime. And while I've been engrossed in these DIY projects, I realized that pressed flowers can be an excellent tool for learning how to draw plants in general. When you look at a flat, two dimensional flower, it doesn't seem so intimidating. All the details become less distracting and more manageable to sketch. And that's precisely what we will be practicing today. On a side note, if you are watching this class in the middle of winter, or you have no access to flowers you could gather and press yourself, don't lose hope. You will find tons of beautiful reference photos on Pinterest and other sides. We will start by finding inspiration in the world of pressed flowers and learning to observe and simplify complex shapes. I will invite you to my doodle herbarium full of sketches inspired by pressed plants. And then we will practice drawing together. We will finish by creating a beautiful botanical illustration using our herbarium as a reference. As a bonus, I will show you how to create a lovely mixed media composition combining real and sketched flowers in one piece. In this class, we will focus on simple loose sketches and imaginary doodles inspired by plants. However, these exercises may also be a great starting point for you if you dream of painting realistic botanical illustrations in the future, You've got to start somewhere, so join me and have fun sketching compositions inspired by pressed flowers! 2. Class Project: I bet you like to learn and see amazing results right away. That's why I designed a simple project that will allow you to create a gorgeous botanical illustration by the end of this class. We will sketch an outline of a glass cloche with a wooden base like this one, and we will fill it with different plants. Your composition can be simple and minimalistic, or bursting with florals. It's totally up to you. You can experiment with different background colors and traditional or digital mediums. If you have real pressed flowers at hand, I will show you how to include them in your illustration to create a uniquely beautiful mixed media piece. 3. Materials: Basically all you need to take part in this class is a pen, a piece of paper and some pressed flowers for reference. As I've mentioned before, if you don't have access to the real thing or have no patience to gather your own plants and wait for them to dry, you can use photos to study and sketch these flat shapes. In the class project description, you will find a link to my personal Pinterest board full of pressed flower images that may become handy during your practice. Just make sure you are not copying entire compositions created by other artists. I will be creating my sketches with a simple Micron pen, but you are free to use any medium from colored pencils to digital tools like Apple pencil and Procreate. If you want to sketch your final composition before inking it, you will need a pencil and an eraser. And if you decide to create a mixed media piece, including pressed flowers, prepare a washi tape, double-sided tape, and/or glue to attach plants to the paper surface. 4. Art of Observation: Let's start with observing our pressed flowers with awe and wonder, like a child would do. Just for now forget about drawing. Don't stress about it. Release the pressure and overwhelm, and just follow your curiosity. Examine every tiny detail. You can even use a magnifying glass. And let yourself enjoy the shapes and colors. Now do the opposite. Squint your eyes and focus on the overall shape of a plant. Is the stem straight or bent? Are the flowers big or small, scattered or clustered? What is the shape of these clusters? The trick is to find simplified shapes that will become building blocks of your sketch. Don't try to draw the whole plant right away after glancing at it. Construct it piece by piece from basic elements, and then add more of the tiny details you observed. This way, you can develop a unique botanical vocabulary of motifs and doodles, filtered by your perception style and medium, and use them in many future artworks, even when working without reference. If you watched my class on Idea Books, you can gather your inspirations there, right with all your other creative ideas. You can also use a separate journal and create a doodle herbarium like mine. Or you can just practice on a loose piece of paper. It's totally up to you. 5. Doodle Herbarium: So let's take a look into my doodle herbarium and then we will make some sketches together. I like to attach pressed plants to one page and make sketches on the other. I focus on different parts of the plant and try to simplify some shapes. My goal is not to draw the whole plant perfectly. I don't stress about it and just skip to the most interesting parts. Some of these sketches are more realistic, and some are completely imaginary, just inspired by a detail or two. I experiment with combining several plants into one, and sometimes I even turn some elements into patterns. This is a joyful, stress-free approach that will help you master the art of observation and simultaneously let your imagination run wild. You can experiment with different materials, making your sketches neat or messy. Treat your sketchbook as a playground, and remember, there are no rules. In the next lessons, we will create some sketches, so you can see the whole process from start to finish. 6. Myriads of Dots: We will start with this lovely dedicate plant I found during one of my hikes. Notice that the tiny flowers are not covering the branches evenly. There are a lot of gaps between them. This is what we are going to focus on here. Basically, we need to draw a bunch of curved lines and adorn them with a lot of tiny dots. I make my dots squiggly to create a loose sketch, but you can focus on creating perfect circles for a cleaner look. I add some small branches as I go to make the composition more balanced. Now let's take a look at the second branch of the same plant I gathered. This one seems to be at a different stage of blooming. It has a lot more flowers on it, both big and small, and it seems a lot more complicated. To make it look fuller, start by drawing a bunch of bigger circles along the branches. Only then at dots as before. To make this sketch even more lush and detailed, finish by adding a lot of teeny tiny dots around the branches. 7. Delicate Clusters: I love flowers that grow in tiny clusters, like Baby's Breath, for example. When pressed, they turn into a fan shaped forms that are really easy and pleasant to draw. Let's start with this one. Again, if you think of it, it's just a bunch of lines and dots. Sketch several loose lines meeting at one point. Then at tiny lines at the end of each longer line, like you were drawing a dandelion. You can add several smaller structures like this to make the cluster look more full. Now it's time to fill these little fans with circles. I'm repeating the same process here, but I'm using black dots instead of circles. The slight modification completely changes the look and feel of the design. Feel free to experiment when adding such details. Now take a good look at this plant. Notice how the main branches fork into a bunch of smaller ones and how dense the flower clusters are. We will start with sketching the branches and then play with the shapes of these clusters. Here I'm adding simple cups at the ends of these branches. I will add some cups partly hidden behind the first row to make the cluster more dense. This is a great way to make your sketch seem more complicated without feeling overwhelmed. Just start simple and add more and more details as you go. Working this way is easier than planning a complex composition up front. Now that you know how to create a basic sketch, you can modify how these cups look. I will adorn them with dashes for more texture and add these tiny fluffy hats at the top. Baby's Breath is lush, delicate and messy. I like to draw a bunch of tiny clouds in several layers to capture these lovely floral clusters. In the second version, I will add darker detail at the base of each flower to indicate sepals. 8. Flowers & Petals: Sketching individual pressed flowers, or even single petals, is probably the easiest endeavor. You just have to focus on how the center looks and then establish the shape of the petals surrounding it. Let's start with this gorgeous single petal. I'm inspired by the delicate veins that cover it, so I will focus on capturing that in my sketch. Now I turn this design into an imaginary plant, as seen from the side, by adding stems to single petals. Such motif will look lovely in any botanical composition. Now take a look at this rose. Start with drawing a bunch of squiggly circles to indicate the center of it. Then at petals around it, making sure they overlap, like that. Finish with some sepals peeking out from behind the petals. Very often, a simple bunch of dots and dashes can capture the essence of the flower. This one is messy and a bit jagged. so I chose these harsh geometric petals to sketch a quick, simplified version of it. The beautiful center is by far the most interesting element of these flowers. You don't need much to sketch it. Draw several petals coming from the middle, add a bunch of dashes adorning these petals. And you're done. Sometimes it's worth looking at the underside of a pressed flower. You can find some fantastic details that can inspire interesting doodles you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. When sketching pressed flowers, study the shape of the petals and observe how they overlap. This will give you endless ideas for new doodles. 9. Leaves & Branches: Here I've gathered some different leaves and branches, so you can see how many amazing shapes there are to draw from. Let's start with my favorite fern. I took a tiny part of one to observe and study it. I ended up with three iterations. First, sketch a slightly curved central axis, then add the diagonal lines to create a skeleton to help you draw your fern. Notice that I make these diagonal lines longer and longer as I approach the bottom of the leaf. Now all you have to do is to draw an outline around the skeleton. If you feel confident enough, you can draw the fern without the aid of the diagonal lines. I like this organic and messy look, but keeping the proportions right is a bit harder the last version of this fern is the easiest to draw and the most abstract one. Just create a center line and then move along it, adding slightly curved, oblong shapes from top to bottom. Notice they are not touching each other. When you look at a really complicated shape like this one, it seems impossible to draw it, especially on a smaller scale. In situations like that, I encourage you to use the following trick. Choose just one offshoot of the branch, preferably near the bottom where it is longer and well developed. Take a good look at it and draw it like it was a whole branch. It will allow you to get to know the structure of it. This is basically what I did with a part of the fern before. I make these tiny leaves roughly filled with black and quite messy to achieve an organic look. And here I repeat the exercise with a bit cleaner leaves to show you how you can modify these designs to suit your taste. When sketching this particular plant, I will focus on how long, slender and delicate the leaves are. I will start with several main lines topped with bigger oblongs and then add more leaves as I go to make the branch look more full and balanced. Now it's your turn! Find some interesting pressed flowers, real life, or photographed, and create some loose sketches. In the next lesson, we will use these doodles to create beautiful botanical illustration. 10. Final Illustration: Now it's time for our final illustration. We will start with sketching a simple decorative cloche. Sketch an oval for the base. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect. The more wonky and hand drawn your cloche looks, the more charm your illustration will have. Now sketch another oval of the same size above the first one, and connect them with vertical lines. This is your base. Now mark the top of your cloche and start sketching the sides of it, stopping at around two thirds of the height. Now, connect the top of the cloche with the sides by sketching gentle curves. I am not entirely happy with the second curve, as it was hard for me to draw at that angle. Feel free to rotate the paper, so your wrist moves more naturally. Now I will erase these lines on the back so they don't distract us. The whole bottom of the cloche, will be filled with flowers anyway, so we don't need them. However, if you plan to create a minimalistic sketch with just a few details, leave them as they are. We will build the composition working from the bottom of the cloche. I will be using my herbarium as a reference for the whole time, combining different sketches from previous exercises. I will start with a close-up of Baby's Breath cluster and place it at the border of the base. I will squeeze it in the corner to fill this whole space, ensuring some flowers are touching the glass wall. Now I will add another Baby's Breath cluster, using the second design I developed. I won't be drawing any stems this time, just the cloud-shaped flowers. I plan on creating a pretty dense composition here, so I'll make sure these two clusters are touching, and I will add two more above them. Now it's time to fill this space on the right with something bigger and less detailed for contrast. I think I'm going to choose this rose here. Just make sure the petals touch the base and wall of the cloche, and the flower fits snugly in the corner. Now that the bottom of the cloche is filled with flowers, it's time to move upwards and add some leaves. I will start with my favorite fern. Next, I want to fill this space on the right with something tall and delicate. I think the first plant we sketched will fit here perfectly and will provide a nice contrast to the thick and solid fern. No, let's add another layer of flowers here. I will use the ones based on a single petal, and I will sketch several of them. I will ensure they overlap to create an illusion of depth. I've decided to fill this space with one of my favorite motifs that I developed based on the flower we admired in the lesson on the art of observation. Actually, we could finish here, but I'm addicted to lush insanely detailed illustrations. So let's add a few more branches and flowers. I will go for this motif and try to fit it here like a puzzle. I realized my new flowers are the same height as the fern, and I'm not happy with that. It makes the composition look heavy and flat. To fix it, I will add some more branches to make this element taller. That's better. Now it's time to draw the outline of the cloche with a pen and erase the pencil lines. You could do it upfront before filling the cloche, but this way, you can still modify the shape of it in case some of the plants inside need more breathing room. This time, I will rotate my illustration and take this opportunity to fix the top of the cloche and make it a bit rounder. Now this is optional, but after erasing all the pencil lines, you can fill the cloche base with color. I am using a brush pen for that to speed up the process And voila! This lovely botanical illustration is ready. 11. Bonus: Mixed-Media Piece with Pressed Flowers: In this bonus lesson, I will show you how to combine your sketches with real pressed flowers. I've already sketched the outline of the cloche. I plan to use delicate white flowers, so I chose a dark background and white gel pen for better contrast. I will start with putting flowers on a surface and finding the right place for them. I won't tape them to the page right away because I want some sketch details to go beneath them. I will sketch several branches in the empty spaces to establish composition, more or less. Then I will put pressed flowers to the side so I can focus on drawing. Now, I will develop these sketches to get the background ready. Okay, so let's return with the pressed flowers and see if more empty spaces need filling. Yep, I will add some details here. I will also add another branch at the top. I will work on these details later on. But now I'm so happy with the position of pressed flowers that I want to tape them to the surface already. I like to use cute washi tape for this purpose, because I think it makes the illustration look even more adorable. I will tape it in a few places so the stems won't slide over or move around anymore. This is a good method for taping down the stems and branches. However, for bigger flowers like these, I use double-sided tape to secure them to the surface. You can also use transparent glue for all the elements. It will make tiny floral clusters stick to the surface as well. Okay, now that our pressed flowers are taped to the surface, I will fill the final empty spaces with some details, especially at the bottom. The illustration looks magical already, but I will finish it with stars and moon to make it even more enchanting. 12. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking my class today. I hope you enjoyed these exercises and you feel encouraged to observe plants more closely and draw inspiration from them. I can't wait to see your gorgeous illustrations, so please don't forget to share them in the Projects and Resources tab. If you love drawing flowers, I invite you to check out my other class, Botanical Bliss: 6 fun ways to fill your sketchbook with floral doodles. For more relaxing doodle exercises, watch Slow drawing, Slow living: Get in the flow with ocean doodles. It will help you turn your creative session into a truly magical experience filled with candles and the calming sounds of ocean waves. And if you want to stay tuned for my next classes, follow me here on Skillshare! So, happy creating, and see you next time!