When I have been inspired to paint I always start with some observations & rough sketches of my chosen subject. In this case its a Passion flower.
Firstly I look at the different elements of the plant such as stems, leaves, flowers, buds, tendrils etc, their shapes, and how they interact with each other and the general habit of the plant.
I then sketch out a very rough composition of where I want the flowers and leaves on the page. As the flowers are very complicated I won’t draw any detail until I’m happy with the placement.
Once this is done all the fine detail of the drawing goes in – but only very lightly as I don’t want my pencil lines to be seen when the painting is finished.
Then comes the fun bit – colour! For this painting I used Polychromos & Prismacolor pencils which give a lively vibrant effect – just what I want for my Passion Flower.
These pencils are all about blending so I first put Cool Grey 2 in the darkest areas before layering on the main bod
y colour which for the leaves is Lime and the petals Dark Crimson. Using a Cream and White pencil I blend in the highlights.
After many days of building up all the colours the final step is burnishing the surface and erasing any dirty marks on the paper from the pencil dust.
I always use a piece of paper to rest my drawing hand on over the piece to prevent smudging but a putty rubber usually gets any light marks out.
The final step – placing a mount over the image to frame it.