From a very early age, I have had a love for drawing and painting flowers. Wherever I may be in the UK, observing the flowers in summer gardens in full bloom brings back many happy memories from my childhood.
My favourite types of garden are English Country Cottage gardens, I always take photographs of beautiful flowers, whether it be giant Aliums or Agapanthus gracing the coastal gardens of Cornwall, wild poppies in the endless sky fields of Suffolk or the hardy Geraniums, Delphiniums, Daisies , Phlox and Dahlias in the gardens of my home county of Leicestershire.
Both sets of my grandparents loved their gardens, growing and planting flowers, fruits and vegetables every year, tending to them with care and knowledge and my Dad has a wonderful cottage style garden that he has spent many years shaping, establishing and adding to.
Only last year, I happily sat with my Mum sketching the wonderful large cluster of Oxeye daisies that are thriving again this year in their garden.
From the first moments of learning to hold a crayon, I always had pens, paintbrushes, pastels and crayons with me and a sketchbook to interpret and record what I see, flowers were my go to and they still very often are when I need to lose myself in my Art for a while.
Photographing and sketching Flowers brings me calm and a real appreciation of the delicate intricacies of nature. I lose my cares and escape my to do list in my mind when I am in a garden appreciating the wonderful host of colours that summer brings.
Welcome to my article where I reveal more about my journey creating my Summer blooms designs. There is something wonderful about these drawings that I initially began to create during a difficult and scary time in my life.
What appeared on my paper became a riot of colour and I felt inspired to create over time, several designs that are a jubilant celebration of life and nature that will look great on yours walls and in your homes and will bring sunshine to the dullest of grey days.
Floral Collection by Obi and Me
Summer Blooms are a vibrant and uplifting range of designs that evoke feelings of the joy and warmth that sunny days of summer here in the UK bring. They are part of my Floral Collection range and available here in our shop.
This collection of colourful hand drawn designs started life after I had suffered Sepsis, a serious and traumatic illness. In the days that followed, I found that I needed to return to drawing to aid my recuperation and rest and to take my mind to a happier, more hopeful and restful place.
Our Cocker Spaniel, Obi was a tiny pup and he would curl up on my knee whilst I drew and created the first of these designs.
Adding designs to this collection has become an ongoing project for me, a go to place when I need to be present and absolutely in the moment. Drawing flowers in my sketchbook is a beautiful way of recording what I see in gardens but they are also my way of recording seasonal changes when I am out and about walking with our dogs.
Sketching can provide a lovely distraction from discomfort or worry and on days when my health doesn’t feel so good, they are a lovely way to feel productive and building the collection provides me with purpose.
The designs that I developed in my sketchbook that form my Summer Blooms collection evoke thoughts and memories of such warm summer days, bees buzzing excitedly around fragrant lavender plants in the warm breeze and of watching butterflies settling delicately for a moment on petals and then taking flight again. I wanted my designs to appear worthy of colourful butterflies settling on my sketchbook page.
To me, this collection of floral artwork is a celebration of life, energy and the vast variety of sumptuous colours and textures that are found in the Great British Summer garden.
Each one of these vibrant, colour packed designs started life a line drawing in my sketchbook. Producing line drawings of flowers using black ink pen is something that I absolutely love, I don’t know why but, I find that the shapes and forms come easily to me and the details flow out of me and onto the paper.
The more I draw in this way and practise, the more enthused I get about the simple interpretation of what I observe. As I draw I look closely at the colours and textures of the petals and pollen but I don’t use any colour initially, instead, I make a mental note in my head or note in my sketchbook on the back of my page.
By taking photographs of the flowers, I record easily the contrasts in colour and how they sit against each other. I look for beautiful contrasts and colours that ‘pop’ against one another and imagine them working together in the later stages of my design.
Inspiration and Reference Material
There is nothing quite like observing flowers outside and sitting down to draw them Plein Air and it has to be my favourite but when the British summer weather has other ideas, I use my host of photographs to work from.
Referring to my photographs helps me develop compositions that reflect the wonderful variety of flower sizes and natural layers that are formed in our gardens.
Working from photographs can help to flatten an image in your mind and assist the process of drawing somewhat. One tip I would give to you if your struggle to simplify what you are observing and drawing using simple line, would be to edit your photograph to view it in black and white.
This way, your eye and mind will be focused upon the shapes you are looking at and help you to create your interpretation on your paper. Decisions on colour can come later on.
Of course, I don’t dismiss garden weeds when sketching and observing, to me they can often be most beautiful and they add greenery, energy and contrast for brightly coloured flower heads to sit next to within a design.
Creative Style
Whilst creating my compositions of flowers for this Summer blooms collection, I worked in a very intuitive way, adding flower and seed heads instinctively where needed to create contrast between sizes and also between busy, highly concentrated intricate areas. Where a little space was needed, I used larger flower heads.
I adore seed heads and one of my absolute favourite flowers is the Allium, adding Allium heads to a composition of softly shaped petals is a good way of filling a background with a funky, spiky, eye pleasing pattern.
I use my interpretation of a Dandelion on clocks and Allium heads often, filling spaces with them and enjoying the mindful repetition of creating the little sticks and bobbles arranged in circular formations.
Art materials and technique
To start my designs, I used the fine tip of my Uniball fine line Eye pen, made by Mitsubishi, these pens are my absolute go to for creating smooth flowing lines.
They are just brilliant for making the flowing, curved lines of petals and fine enough to add the intricate patterns formed by flower pollen stamen, sepals and all the parts of a flower that I interpret into repeated detailed little patterns.
Although flowers are detailed and varied, with changes in size and proportion, when creating these particular designs, I prefer not to work in pencil first and I go straight into fine line pen.
For me this takes away any indecision and I simply enjoy the process. I let go of perfection and I allow myself to accept the marks that I create as correct. If something goes a little out of shape, I tell myself that nature is very forgiving, the perception that we have of flowers is something that can be used to our advantage. In basic terms, our mind knows that flowers have a center, petals, leaves and a stem. Designing with flowers can be all about interpretation and representation.
Fine Line Roller Ball pen
Drawing in pen often leads to happy accidents and additions to a design that can often be triumphant.
Unlike drawing in pencil, you of course cannot erase lines but I enjoy this, it leads to expression and artistic license.
Clusters of flower petals appear on my page. I naturally play with size and scale, making areas of contrast, mixing big bold flower heads with small, dainty ones. The addition of little berries and seeds is also a lovely way of adding an almost polka dot pattern to your composition and can really set off the main flowers.
Of course these designs lend themselves to being repeated, with a background in designing fabrics for furnishing companies, I get so excited thinking of these floral designs in repeat and imagining all kinds of fabric and products they could be printed on to.
If you are experimenting with creating designs and are unfamiliar with creating repeats in your work, a nice way to begin the process is to trace off one or two of your flowers and bring the same shape in again on your paper. I often do this to add balance and a little symmetry to a piece.
I try to keep my pen moving smoothly when I work, adding flowers and petals, leaves and berries as I go. It is good to employ some imagination too, take a little artistic licence and create new flowers as well as ones you have observed.
Once you have filled your paper with line drawing, you can really start to have fun when you start to add colour.
Windsor and Newton Promarkers
This brings me on to Windsor and Newton Promarkers. I absolutely love working with these pens. They are available to buy in all sorts of wonderful shades. Often packaged in themed selections, Windsor and Newton have every colour combination covered.
Pro-marker original, professional pens are a double ended pen which gives you lots of scope for creating different types of line as well as shading large areas easily and they offer streak free colour as well as. They are also fab for creating tiny detailed areas too.
On one end of the pen is has a chunky, chisel tip end, this end is lovely for filling curved petals and areas of background, you can angle your pen to work in the direction of the petal or leaf you are working on and if you choose to work in their water based version of their pens, you can easily blend to close shades together.
Subtle shifts from dark to light can be achieved on your paper and I really favor these pens as the closest thing to painting when out sketching or even in my studio. No water needed, blendable pens come with a neutral blending pen in their pack.
The other end of Pro-Markers is the bullet tip which is great for colouring detailed areas, you can get into those beautiful sections of detail and make the colours in your design pop against one another as the quality of colour from these pens is fantastic, offering a wonderful professional finish.
The way I approach adding colour to my designs is similar to how I approach drawing the shapes of the flowers and leaves in my fine line pen. My favourite shape of paper area to work within is square, I work quite intuitively, I often start by placing my first flower drawing somewhere on the page, close to the centre or slightly off centre, then I keep adding flowers across the paper, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, filling the paper as I go. I take time to review how the design is taking shape, sitting back with a cup of tea and reflecting regularly upon its progress.
Achieving balance across the piece is my goal, you don’t want your design to be too heavy and busy in one area and lack interest in another.
When it comes to colour, flower designs are a perfect excuse to unleash your love of every colour, shade and hue under the rainbow but in a refined and selective manner. Taking into consideration the typical shades and tones of your key flowers is a good place to start, next select a colour for your background that provides contrast and Pop!”
To help you with your selection of background colour, you could look for opposites on the colour wheel these are referred to as complimentary colours, they create a visual ‘feel good’ sitting next to each other. For this collection, I decided to set each design against a background colour inspired by a summer fruit to add to the joyful ambience that each compositions give.
Paper type
The loveliest and best quality of paper to work on is Windsor and Newton marker paper, this paper is bleed proof and is available in two weights 75gsm and 160 gsm.
I prefer the thicker paper and I mark out a square area in which to work as working in a square area to produce a design lends itself to repeating the design afterwards if you wish to.
Conclusion – adding to unique collection
The Obi and Me Summer Blooms collection was born out of a rather dark phase in time of my journey, and yet it sparked an outpouring of cheerful colour and design inspired by my love of flowers and gardens. I began to use the process as my mindful, meditative time, a time of calm transportation to a comfortable, comforting space, time to day dream or just enjoy my favourite music with Obi by my side.
Now my dream to see it available on products and posters for you to enjoy in your homes is has come true here on Baldhiker. Paul and I work together selecting and designing high quality products for you.
Immersing myself into the creative process of drawing and design has always been an essential part of me and my healing journey, Summer Blooms is a collection that I intend to keep adding to. I hope that you enjoy browsing our products featuring my flower packed designs and look out for new designs joining the collection too.