Floral Illustration: Composition Meets Negative Space

1. Introduction: Hey guys, I'm Peggy, and in this class I'm going to bring you an exciting new project that is a little step up from regular Botanical Line Drawing. The idea in this class won't be all necessarily learning the doodles themselves, and if that's something that you want to learn, I really encourage you to take my Botanical Line Drawing class, which will walk you through all of that. This class will show you a little bit of that, but it's more targeted toward composition and how you can really form flowers and botanical elements into an overall piece. Learn how to overlap those properly and then get them on the paper like you want. In this particular class we're going to be learning a negative space that we leave open for you can put a photo, you can put a phrase if you want to. Really, it's limitless what you can do with this negative space. I'm really excited about seeing where that takes you, and again, so if you want to learn some basic doodles, to get started before you jump in here, Botanical Line Drawing is a great class for that. If you're ready to go and you like bursting to expand your skills in what you can create with these guys and this is a great class for you and I can't wait to see what you come up with. Let's get started head first. 2. What You'll Need: The tools that I'm using in this class are pretty straight forward. I just got some mixed media paper. I just use it because I have it on hand more so than drawing paper and I like how it's thicker and if I want to add water media to it, I can later. Then I'm going to use a micron 05, which I think that it has the perfect thickness. If you want to go smaller, I would do another one but probably no smaller than and 03, which will give you some finer detail or an 08 if you want to go real bold. I like them a little chunkier and bolder and little dirtier looking because I like that nice bold thick line. But 05 and 08 are good. I have a pencil. You'll want to pencil. It doesn't have to be crazy sparkly. I don't even know where I got this pencil, but I tend to use it for all of the [inaudible] because who can't stop looking at shiny things? I'm talking about it more just so that I can spin it around or because then you can see it longer. Then you'll want an eraser. I'm using the Prismacolor Magic rubber eraser and eraser. Did I say eraser? But you don't have to, any eraser is fine, but I'm just saying this guy's awesome and that's it. Really, really simple. If you like reference, watch this next part. Naturally, no matter how many things that we learn to draw, doodles, what not, any muscle memory, unless we're doing all of those all the time, they're not going to be in the forefront of our minds. So I'm just going to show you a couple of options for reference. The first is, I have a botanical line drawing class which goes over an abundance of little doodles that you can incorporate, flowers and leaves and such and then I also have a book called Botanical Line Drawing. This has 200 step-by-step flowers, leaves, cacti, succulents, and other items found in nature. You're going to find items like basic leaves, lots of different versions of those. I'm just going to skim through here, but differently, it's like this. Like these where they get more stemy, a little more involved. Ferns, they start to branch out, get larger, some tropical items, and then we move into flowers. You have like these doodle references, you've got some face up references, things like this. So this is a really good reference for things, projects like what we're doing today because it's going to give you an overall really good idea of where to go with it and things that you can incorporate if you're like me and end up doing the same five or six flowers over and over. That's what I'm using for reference. I just wanted to introduce that to you. That's all and we will move into the next video and get started. 3. Creating Your Template for Negative Space: The first thing that you want to do for your composition is to ensure that you know exactly what you want your layout to be. Typically nine times out of ten, I will choose a circle. I think that they are composition-wise, very appealing and easy on the eyes. That's what I'm going with and I'll show you how to do that. But you can also choose things like hearts. You can choose things like rectangles or squares really anything. Squares make really great borders for things like this. Circles are one that it's not something that you can just grab a ruler and map out your area. You need something cylinder. The first way that you can do this is to find a round object nearby. This is sometimes harder than it seems, but get creative because you never know what you're going to find. Luckily, I have a candle right next to me. I'm going to use this as reference. It is a pretty small circle think about that too. So composition-wise, I got this nine by 12 piece of paper, but am I going to want to fill in this entire space and only keep this small center? Or am I going to want to do something quite larger and fill out only a border? Think about those choices stylistically. I'm going to keep the smoke, so I'm going to do a lot of illustration on here. I'm just centering this exactly where I want it. Then I'm going to take the pencil real lightly and just drag it around. I'm almost barely holding on to it because I want it to be super light. Then if you see it's warping weird. It doesn't really matter because we are going into that. That gives you the overall cylinder shape. That is a way to create the circle. Another way to do this, I'm going to flip this over to show you. Or say you don't have anything anywhere near you or you don't have anything cylinder at all. It's not going to happen. This is how I do this. I draw really light line or excuse me, a little light mark in the middle. I'm going to make these larger so you can see them better. You wouldn't want to make it this bold though. I'm going to make one here. Then from here I'm going to measure out on my pencil, like let's say I want it to be this big. So I'm going to measure out right here on my pencil and see, that height seems good, it's going to seem good the whole way around. I see that this is connecting to this little divot. If you see that, or a little pencil is shiny, but there's this series of numbers right here. I'm going to mark that in my mind. Put my finger at that distance and make a mark. Then I'm going to turn it upside down, find that spot where it sat, make a mark right here. Making these large so you can see them, but you want to make them really light and then I'm going to do it on both sides here, and then same thing over here. Now you see that you have these perfect sides. But how are you going to make sure that those sides are even, so you're not going to come into far out, too far to bubbly. I'm going to do the same thing on these four corners. I'm going to find those numbers, see that it's right here. Because remember, pretend that these are really light marks, but I'm basically going in between these two. I see that that is where my reach is. Go on between these two, right here and then last one right here. There are my marks. From here I'm just going to set my hand down and use my wrists' motion. So going around. When I stop my had and I'm using my elbow. I'm basically letting my whole arm guide me to make an overall shape and then you have your circle. Pretend that these are much lighter, remember, and then you'll go in and erase those. But everything you want to do with pencil to create your circle is pretty light because you want to be able to erase it. But then that gives you that nice cylinder shape for when you do your design. I hope that helps. That's a really easy trick for when you want to make a circle you don't have something on hand and even pry. It even looks better than the one I did with reverence, which I think I'm actually going to make this a little bit bigger. I free-hand these because I am just notorious for not making these things perfect, but you feel comfortable doing that, please feel free. A lot of people can't deal with that. The magic rubber eraser, by the way, buy [inaudible] color. Best eraser ever, I love it. Once that is in place, we are going to just start drawing. 4. Start Drawing: The first thing that I do for my composition is, it really doesn't matter where you start. The thing that I like to make sure that I do though, is to work in spans across. I don't want there to be an issue where I have a big cluster of items right here and then it starts getting more sparse. I'm going to do it pretty condensed, but basically you want it to be cohesive across the board. For balance, if you worked better starting with one corner going to the next and going to the next then coming back down, cool, if it worked better, going across like this, cool, if you work better from center outward, that's great too. That's probably one of the more likely choices. That way you know you have your center good to go. I'll probably start that way. It's hard to predict because I feel like I'll say that I'm going to start one way and then I'll start going like way over here and completely be like the hypocrite of how I set to start, so I'm not going to promise that that is where I'm going to start my very first marks are going to be there. Bear with me, but just work to what makes sense for you and just keep in mind that we want to keep balance and cohesive that's got to be a word but we just want to keep balance. I'm using the micron O5. I'm just going to draw a simple branch with leaves and I'm going to do it coming up into this circle like you would a wreath, only it won't be a wreath. I'm just going to do the middle stem, and these don't have to be perfectly on that line either. They can come in or come out, which I will be doing with this because I don't want it to be this perfect circle, I want branches to come into it. Then from here, and you guys are welcome to do the same illustrations that I am doing if you would like. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about what they are because I'm just wanting to show you placement. If you do want to know what they are, the references that I mentioned are really good resources. You've got this in here, but adding detail is one of those things that you can choose to leave out or to add in. It's really up to you how detailed you want that to be. Something that I would suggest doing though as you draw in order to determine how much of that you want to put in, see how it looks with limited detail, like your complete piece. If you think that it needs more or it looks like something's missing, it's usually detail and that's a really good time to go back in and add those extra elements. See how I started right here, I want to do this again. I'm going to come down to the bottom and do one here, and I just kind of pick and choose where I'm going to want to add stuff and then that's that idea. See, I knew I shouldn't have said anything about starting on the circle, I was going to. Then I'm going to choose something else, probably just a basic leaf cluster. See how I'm dipping into that circle. A little trick with your pen. Most pens that you're using will have this ability, but the pressure, the ease if you sat down and then flick off. It'll allow you to get thinner lines as you lift off so it's thicker toward the base and then releases the pressure anyway, you get it they're thick to thin lines will occur, which is always a fine effect. It will make things look less doodly if you do it that way so think about that when it comes to what you want to achieve as far as the aesthetic goes. Then I'm going to curve something inward here and probably go, it's one of my go-to's, but I always love it, so I have no shame. I'll probably put some of these elsewhere too. You see how I'm creating the balance. I'm not really sure what's going to happen with it yet, but I'm going to create it. Then I'm already going to start going behind this because I want to make sure that it's dense, and that helps with composition. You might want to draw another one of these and yes, you could draw it right here or right here, but you could also, you know that this area is open, so start drawing it behind already. Whatever you put next to it can then shift behind this one. These are things to keep in mind as you are creating the design, and then see how it's getting lost in this so I'm just going to make these lines a little bit bolder because I did that here. I'm going to probably want to do it throughout other places too, so I'll go ahead and get this to match. There's absolutely nothing wrong with overlapping lines like this. It's one of my favorite illustration styles and you will find it in a lot that I do. It's repeating lines that's very off of itself. Notice I'm starting with leaves, that's just my own thing, just what happened, I wasn't even really thinking about it. I love greenery so much that if you want to do all flowers, that's totally great. If you want to do a mixture, also great, and so that's what I'm going to do. If you're following along for the most part with the designs that I am doing, then you'll end up with that too. See how I overlapped these two leaves and they're the same style, but they're coming off with the same base and this is just going to start filling up. I'm going darken this one so it stands out a little bit more, and then the problem with a lot of these types of things like, if you have stems, where does the stem start? You're not going to want to just do stems along the entire border. What do you do with these stems that are supposed to be attached to something? You want to be able to have some floaters, if you will. Vines are really great for that, so you can come off. Let's just throw one up here like this, and these are great for space fillers. That's going to be a floater and then flowers can go around that. I'll throw another one coming into this circle a little bit from down here. I don't spend a whole lot of time making these perfect as you can see. The reason why is that there's going to be so much information on the paper that those little details are going to completely be hidden, it's not even going to be a thing or get noticed. Don't think that if you mess up, you have to start over. One of the main things that I always tell everybody is if you feel like you're stuck or you feel like you've grown something, don't throw your paper on the ground and start over. Push through it because chances are you're going to end up loving that thing that you push through more than anything else that you're going to do because you're learning from it and transforming it into something that's even better than it would have been had you not made that mistake, if that makes sense. I've had so many people that try to do that in classes and I'm like nope, I'm the worst instructor ever. No, you're actually going to continue this and I know you don't want to, but that's what's going to happen. Then they don't want to, but then they do it and push through and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I can't even believe that I created this." Yeah, that's the idea. You'd also have things coming off of the center, but don't make that too much because it'll be like the same thing, like a border and we're not making a border, we're just making negative space, so think about directional values that way. 5. Flowers and Nature Items: I'm going to put a flower in there, also one of my go-to flowers, which you will find in the book in the class. In a lot of my art work. I don't know why this guy follows me around. It's not like aesthetically my favorite. It just pops up whenever I'm doing some centers for flowers, I tend to make these kinds of squiggly lines because it works. I'm not spending a lot of time forming this. Do not think that you have to know crazy details, but just enough to kind of add a little bit of depth for separation of whatever else is going to be around. When you take them behind, it is like you are hovering the areas that you do not want it to overlap and then continue and you are hovering because then you can not imagine where the line would be if that obstacle was not in the way. This is a good example of where I could tuck a leaf behind, coming out here. Even having peekaboo where it does not branch completely off and it is tucked, tucked behind. Then you can even have it come through since we have some open space. I'm going to darken some of these petals just little bit. Polygamy is going for like a boulder effect anyway. There is nothing wrong with smaller, like I use an O-5 for most of my illustrations because I liked the bolder line, but you can always do something that is a finer line. It is really beautiful. I look at some of that work and say that is not something that I tend to do. See how this lines is branching off that way outward and then I'm probably going to throw something in coming the opposite direction inward. Do not go with the slopes. I do not want things to look like they are growing upward necessarily. I want them to look like they are dancing around the page. Cutting them through just a flower in here to break up. If you ever need to break up, what looks like is becoming a theme, for instance, all of these are growing up upward. Doing a flat image like the flower here where you do not see a growth pattern breaks up that. From there you can form it differently or do some more solid pieces or bring something like this down here and so on, which helps a lot. A lot of times mark-making and things like how this guy was created or just doing these small circles and things like that can really add to the overall piece, which is fun. It is like that pop of depth that you mean and could double as an item in nature because there are so many random objects out there. The same way that we are making these circles here is the same way that I do lavender except less condensed. If I were to turn this and come out, and I just do like a little ball two, three underneath and then skip down to just two, just do a few here. It is sparse as it goes up the stem gets a little wider toward the bottoms of the bottom. Doing these long stemy plants in a mix of things that are more floral, heavier leaf, breaks it up and gives it, it might look a bit crazy you right now but when it's done it gives a balance that would not have been there before if those elements were not there. That is why I love these. They are like the belly buttons. They work well to break things up if you have a line of flowers or you have a line of leaves, throwing these guys in there, it changes the whole perspective. I know another class, you will see those in everything that I do, all the time you'll see them, because I see them all the time. 6. Adding Depth: This little thing that I'm drawing right now is, who knows? It's like you want to think it's leaf, until you start drawing these details and then you're like, what is this? I don't know. This is something that I just started drawing one day and I loved it and now it's in almost everything that I do. Again, see, I'm going to my go-tos, but I love them. Something I want to mention is, as you see when you're adding detail, instead of just going for straight up doodles, you can add these lines, and for the most part you see you're adding detail. But what you'll notice is that it gets the wider spaces here lighter and darker at the base and at the tip. The reason that that is also achieved is because as we are working, even though we're spaced out for the most part the same, if I add these smaller lines in here, it will create more depth towards the bottom. Or if you have a really small area at the tip, even if I'm spaced out the same here and I don't add those smaller lines, you see how. It's because it's joining altogether and it's starting from one area where the pen is overlapping a lot. So then it's creating that darker area because it's overlapping and then growing outward and dispersing if you will. That's the reason that effect is there which will come in handy as you're learning about detail and wanting to add more. Just know that, that's the way that depth is created. If you want to darken an area then line work, now that's a way to do it. But see how that's coming together, that's area where it's condensed but you can break up the elements and then see that it's just a really nice botanical illustration so far. See how I pop behind the sun. It's going in that direction but it's not going to overlap to takeaway from the forefront. Something else to keep in mind too, is you don't want do a bunch of dark areas all in the same place. You actually want to make sure that you're spreading that out because you don't want a bunch of light. Things like the leaves that don't have a lot of detail make those smaller ones because those details will get lost. Having that balance of things that do have more depth, and then things that don't will give you that separation. As I'm doing my composition now that I have some of those elements, that's something I'm starting to think about. 7. Approaching Paper Edges: Eventually you are going to start running off the page. You want to do this by actually running off the page. You have the option to tape your border and this is often done if you want something to be more of like self framed, where there's a white border around your page. If you lay down like washy tape or even masking tape, something like that, then draw into that and then remove it. When you're done, you'll have that nice white border. I pick and choose when I want to do that. This isn't a project that I'm going to want to. In the next, an elements that won't even need to run off the page. But they do start kind of like what we did at the bottom. Then what I'm doing right here. It's not always necessary, but you do want that mix again. It's all about that composition in this style. This area here, I can choose to either tuck the flower that you draw inside of this empty space so that it's from behind, or I can keep it afloat. When we're doing these, not everything has to be pushed underneath, that's would be like extremely condensed. I'm just going to do a floater right here, so I'm starting my petal higher above that because that's still condensed, that's condense enough for me and there can be that background. When you're doing a back ground and you have that area showing, it might be of interest to you, to then fill that with the color, black is usually what I would do. Although, when I say usually what I would do, I mean, if I were to choose a color, which is not going to be the case here. Over here. See like some of it's tucked behind here, but it's not pushed into that area. So it's not too much. I want it to be able to breathe a little bit. I also want to talk about petals. 8. Some Tips on Drawing Flowers: As we are creating our petals the folds in them, so see how this one it's like if it was perfect, it would be this shape here. You can see that it's missing that corner. I do that on purpose, basically destroying an imperfect petal so that I can create folds like that. It's just something really simple. If this was down even further, let's make another one of these right here. If this petal was actually more like this, so it's down even further. In that case, I can make it so that it's flap is even further down, instead of so skinny, because the rest of the petals are going to be quite taller. Think about size and how much you're taking away when you make those, and then that will help determine how long or how large a fold could be, if you want to incorporate those. Then with the detail on the lines, I stay away from making them so that they're uniform. So I don't space them out perfectly. I like to have a couple next to each other, like that. They're not all the same length. So I'll do a couple here. This one's longer than that one. Have that, and I do that because I want it to be, I want it to look like a flower. The line mark and the petals will go the same direction, so notice how it's curved out this way and then it's curved out that way. I'm actually going to follow that with these petal directions. Because otherwise it would just look weird. Another thing with petals to keep in mind is when you have some movement, let's say right here. You see how it's like an indent. But if you think about it and when it's not flat, you see that it's coming inward, or you want to give the illusion that's coming inward. When you make your lines, you don't want to make any lines on that inward area. You'd rather want to make them on the sides of it, and what that does when you fill in these areas, they keep that open. It's creating a bend in the petal, so it's creating movements. Now these areas look like they're indented and this one's coming forward toward us and these are indented again. So that is another trick on how to make these petals look more like petals. You can even do that on the ones that have fans. If you like anymore I've just adopted the idea of making it so that all my petals do that and I stay away from the center. Whether I have a bend there or not. I've done it enough times now that it's like muscle memory. Sometimes all through. It gets located through a couple, but for the most part, yeah, I leave that blank. That's that for petals. 9. Filling It In: With really small flowers, I don't do much to make them detailed, I'm just doing the standard five-petaled flower in a very scribbly motion, the one that we all learned when we were kids. I'm just doing it real fast. It's so small that it doesn't need a ton of details. In fact, I'm doing overlapping with it and it's no issue at all because of the type of motion we're making or the line making. 10. How to Handle Gaps: As you near the end of your illustration, you're probably going to run into the problem of having these random white spots. They don't necessarily look like they go with your overall composition or they just look sparse or what have you. If there's an area that you might feel like, what do I do here? The easy solution is leaves and they save you more times than not. I'm going to show you a couple different ways to solve this. Let's say you're looking at an area like this where you have this heavily dense black and then you've got this a lot of white space, and then you have your actual space that you want to fill. If I'm going to do a leaf in here, I'm probably going to do one or two things. If I keep it toward only these two flowers, I'm going to want more detail on it so that it separates from these two flowers and doesn't get lost. If I put it behind this one more, I'm going to want less detail so that it shows that it's separated there. If I do it somewhere in the middle, which I'm going to deal with so I can show you what that will look like. Let's say I'm stemming from here, going up through here, and then coming here and out like this, and then I'm going to do my center stem like that. I've got it in both areas. You can see that it definitely pops from this darker area, but the flowers, it's going to get lost. You can add this circumstance to something with medium detail. You're not going to do something that's super condensed in lines, you're also not going to leave it blank. I'm just going to do these wide lines through the leaf like this, and what that will do is separate. Now it's still stands out from this, but it also stands out from this and the busy area. Even though I have that white space, it filled that because when you step back and look at it as a whole, it looks like it is balanced. We can do the same type of thing over here, where it comes up through here, but you don't necessarily want these to get lost. What I'm going to do is just have a peekaboo leaf coming from this general area. Throw that in and then just do the same quick lines. That's just something to fill that area. It's not the prettiest. Could have been better, but I'm not going to worry about it that much because we're looking at things overall. This area I'm going to keep white. You could throw a couple of leaves in this. The tip here throw an extra pedal behind so that it fills up a little bit, but I don't want to take away from that too much, so I'm going to put a little more detail into this guy. From there I have this area that's pretty weak end. I could definitely use something right here in this corner, gives you something through here. Because these lines, even though there's not a lot of detail in here, it is more narrow so that condenses the line itself. These leaves can be more open because of that, because it will separate, so you're basically sandwiching the leaf with some lines that are closer together, so it will give the separation. If that makes sense, then I'm just going to throw another one, like right here because that's going to take care of that corner area like that. If you feel like it does get a little bit lost because these areas are so condensed, you're not going to want to throw a bunch of detail into the leaves, but I would actually do instead is maybe put some detail in the base of this, and then it stands out just a little bit more. I'm going to move to this area, so you see that there's some blank spots here, I'm just going to throw another petal right here. I'm building off for this flower because I am throwing another petal here, I want to look for balance. I'm going to throw another one here because I want to make sure it is balanced throughout and then maybe another one here , and then another one right here. See how that just really balances the flower, and then it kills that white space too, so they're even now more. That looks like a petal, but it's not. We're going to make it one. Now I just have to take care of this area. Because there's a flower here, I'm just going to work off of it and throw in a couple of leaves and then center stem. Another thing that I like to do in these illustrations is totally not realistic, is to throw in lines on just one side, instead of both. This gives it an interesting appearance and I like the way that it looks. What that does for us is, keeps this area open so you can see there's a leaf there, but it's making it so it doesn't get lost in this leaf. Notice that I did some of those right here because I could have left them white and it wouldn't have been fine. This has the stronger detail. I think I actually laid that first. When you have too busy things, busy detailed items, one on top of the other, they will get lost. There's nothing wrong with doing half and half because then it still differentiates. That makes sense. You know what I might do, because the space is still screaming at me. I'm just going to throw in another one of these types of flowers. Yeah, that's helpful, and then maybe one down here. That makes me happier. Another thing is for my circle, I am a little bit to the right and then it's kind of heavy right here. What I want to do is bring something in right here so that it balances more for me. This can be anything I think I'll just do these types of flowers. Have them come in just a little bit. It makes it, so you don't have to fill the area because it's just coming inward like that, to saying hello. That does it for me. Like all of this heavy, really saturated area gets balanced with something really simple. I have lifted it up and put it here. Rather than making this whole area really heavy, you can do balanced by just tweaking that a little bit. Now I have this area to worry about and it's going to probably go in, add a leaf, since these guys are coming out from this, so I don't want do the same directions all come off of this. Just do a white leave and another one and leave that alone, and then do something right here. We're going to actually do the one side only much more separated than the ones next to it, there we go, because it will break this up a little bit. We could even do a double line. That's like an experiment. You're just building as you go. Make this bolder. Down here, the edges are always the easiest because you can just draw a leaf coming off of the inside or outside. Excuse me. Maybe another one here. I overlap it just slightly because then it will look like it is a pair in the same area, and then I'll do some skinny leaves for this flower. Lastly, I'll throw another one of these coming in this direction so that it makes this corner a little more dense. Having those lines that are closer together, we'll do that. Looking over everything, I see some blank space here, I see some here, some here, some here. Overall, if it looks balanced to you, I'm going to add a little skinny couple leaves there. If it looks mostly balanced, then you can call it good. From there, you have then framed as area in the middle to do whatever you want with. This can be used as a frame and you can put a photo here, you can put lettering here, any design that you want and then just go through and make sure you erase that pencil. I can't even really see my pencil line, so I'm just going to call it good, seems to be all right. 11. Project Time!: Pretty straightforward, right? If you've taken any of my other classes, it's fair to not to say this because I say it every time, but I'm very excited to see what you guys come up with. I really don't need to say that ever again because I think I've said it enough times to where it's like lasting and infinite amount of times. But I really am. Be sure to upload your projects. If you'll also share your work on Instagram, tag #PeggyDeanSkillShare. Yep. That's all. Okay. See you next time.