Sketch Session: Wildflower

1. Intro: Hi, friends. In this collection of short classes, we're going to continue with the sketching sessions we started in my Loose Digital Drawing class. We're going to loosen up with a quick color sketch, which we'll aim to complete in 10 minutes or less. The goal is not perfection here, quite the opposite, actually. The goal is to get used to making quick, confident marks, to embrace our mistakes and to push past perfection. In this sketch session, we're going to be drawing a wildflower. Let's get started. 2. Quick Sketch: First, let's choose a brush. Open the new Procreate library, go to the charcoals set. And we're going to use Florentine, which is first on the list. We'll be using this reference photo, which I found on Pintst, and I'm really hoping it's not AI. It's getting harder and harder to tell these days. But if you'd like to use the same image, you can download it in the resources section. Go ahead and set your timer to 10 minutes, and let's get started. I'm going to start by quickly mapping out a rough skeleton for where the petals will be and for their general shape. Since we won't be relying on a pencil sketch, I find it helpful to have at least a general idea of where to place things. Of course, you can always skip this step if you feel comfortable with diving right into painting the petals freehand. Okay, let's start inking those petals. I'm bumping the brush size all the way up for this. We can take advantage of the semi transparent nature of this brush to naturally create those lines that you see in the petals. It also helps to give them that delicate appearance. We're not going to do a full brush exploration in this session, like we did in the Loose Digital Drawing class. But if you'd like to get more familiar with this brush and how it behaves, you can watch this Brush Review video that I shared on YouTube. Ideally, we'll be doing little to no erasing with this sketch. Remember, we're trying to embrace our mistakes, but as you can see, it's a hard habit to break, at least for me. So hopefully with more practice, we can do these sketches with no erasing at all. This shape is a little tricky. I've gone a little darker than I intended here, but I'm going to make it work. Okay, we can just use a few quick strokes to make the shapes of those buds. Remember, we don't need a lot of details. We can use a few loose lines to suggest the shapes. And since the petals aren't one flat color, we can add a couple additional colors here, like a really light pink here and there and a deeper orange. Actually, I'll add a little yellow first, and I'll work my way down from light colors to darker colors. Oh, gosh, there I go with the undo gesture again. It's surprisingly hard to break that habit. Alright, now I can add a darker orange in the center. Ordinarily, I would try to blend or smooth out those color transitions. But remember, this is supposed to be loose and expressive. So I'm gonna leave those marks just as they are, because we want to see those brush strokes and all the visible shifts in color. So even if your instincts are telling you to clean up those transitions and make everything smoother and more polished, just try to push past that. Uh huh. I actually caught myself before tapping on Dew that time. I'm just gonna force myself to live with that smudge. Alright, let's add an even deeper shade of orange right in the very center. Feel free to experiment with how you apply the color as well. You can switch to a looser grip and maybe use the side of the pencil tip. Just play around to see what different results you get. Okay, I think I'm on the verge of overworking this, so I'm going to stop here, and I'll just add a couple quick layers of color to the buds. A little of this darker orange and maybe a darker pink. On second thought, I'll use the same light pink I used on the petals. Making color choices can really set you behind when working on a timed sketch. So I'll share my palette in the resources section, so you'll have one less thing to think about when you're doing this exercise. If you plan to use different colors, my suggestion would be to pin down your palette ahead of time so you don't have to take time away from sketching to make those decisions. Okay, I'm just going to use loose strokes here to represent the detail in the center of the flower. Now I can move on to the stems and leaves. Again, you don't have to get super detailed here. A few strokes is enough to give you the suggestion of what these are. For the stems, try not to be too controlled with your mark making, loosen up and move fairly quickly. That'll help inject a sense of energy and movement to those lines. Same for the leaves as well. You can also try adjusting how hard you press down when making these marks. This brush is slightly pressure sensitive, so those shifts and pressure will also help the leaves and stems feel more alive, if that makes sense. There is a bloom in the background that's kind of out of focus, so you don't need to add any detail at all. You can just use shape and color to suggest that there's something back there. And here I'm just going to use a darker green to give a little body to those stems and leaves without really having to add much detail. All I'm doing here is loosely adding a little of that darker color along the edge of some leaves and parts of the stems. Alright, before I go overboard with trying to add more details, I'm gonna call it done. I managed to finish in a little under 7 minutes. 3. Detailed Drawing: Here's how my final sketch turned out. Now, are there things that I would change? Absolutely. I'm still on this journey of embracing my imperfect art, so I still tend to focus on all the things I want to change, but I do think I managed to capture the essence of what I was drawing. Like a wildflower, this art feels untamed, unstructured, and free. I encourage you to try this exercise a couple of times for practice using the same or similar subject matter and palette. The more you practice, the more comfortable you'll become with the process. These are a couple more ten minute sketches that I tried, and I definitely felt more comfortable and more pleased with the results as I continued practicing. I hope you'll feel the same as you continue to practice. Remember, this exercise isn't about creating something perfect. It's about creating something expressive. I really look forward to seeing your expressive drawings in the project gallery. Now, if you'd like to try drawing wildflowers at a slower, more structured pace, you can watch this full length tutorial where I share step by step instructions for how to draw this wildflower arrangement. I'll leave a link for you in the resources section. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you in the next sketch session.