Imperfect Rose Drawing

There are so many gorgeous and royalty free rose photos online, that I thought I should consider using someone else’s photo to draw from. I talked about this idea with my husband, who said he admired the character of my mind for asking this question of myself. He didn’t have any ideas to help me out, but it was nice to be admired.

I decided to stand by my own work.  I couldn’t have made my composition from anyone else’s photo of a rose. And there will always be someone else’s pretty photo of a rose, or whatever subject I’m working with, to lure me away from my own work.

My work is to draw the things in my own life that make my heart happy to draw them. If you’re an artist, you probably already know that it takes courage to do this regularly. So, I shook off the fear that I’m not good enough to accomplish this thing and decided to do it once again. (You may now picture me striding resolutely down a hill with bagpipe music filling the air.)

However, I’m not in the least bit a purist when it comes to my own photos. The photos are just references for the image I have in mind, so I’ll cut them up, leave parts out, merge them, or do whatever it takes to create a reference for the drawing I want to make.

Value Drawing
I wanted to re-draw parts of this rose, and to do that I had to see where the light and dark values fell, so I made a very light value sketch on Arches hotpress, my go-to drawing paper, with a B pencil. The B pencil will erase easily with my kneaded eraser and won’t bother the tough surface of Arches.

I wanted to have a more round looking rose, and I think I accomplished that. While I was at it, I moved the center downwards and trimmed back some blown-out outer petals.

The Magic Moment
The rose’s form came quickly while hatching, and moving the values around. I’m not quite sure of the outer petal shaping yet, but I felt as though I wanted to let go and draw them freely.

I’m aware of something happening with this drawing that’s different from usual. There’s a lot more energy, and more freedom to imagine the work as it comes to me to be done.

I’m using a 2B pencil for the darkest shadows, a B for the mid-values and an HB for the lightest values. I’m using my stiff blending brush to smooth the hatching and add value to the areas that aren’t hatched yet.

Evolving Petals
The petals are still evolving, but stopping to scan is helpful. It gives me a chance to slow down and see what I’ve done in a more objective way.

When I compare my rose to the reference photo, I can see I’ve added a good part from my imagination. I did that in a straight forward way. When I extended the petals, I simply extended their gradations with them.

I made that sound as exciting as grinding rocks, but drawing from the imagination is actually more like piloting a hot-air balloon; filled with excitement at take-off, and you never know where you’re gonna land! Because your imagination can take you off course, you need to stop often, assess where it has taken you, and drop anchor if needed. If you don’t, your drawing could end up looking like it crash-landed in LaLa land. (It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure this out.)

Now I’m using B, F, and 2H pencils for dark, mid, and light values, and a 3B for the few extremely dark lines in the rose. I used a B pencil to fill in the leaves. And I used my stiff brush to smooth my hatching, as I do after each new layer of hatching.

Hard And Soft Edges
I eliminated the hip of the rose. It had migrated out of place and was irritating me, a sure sign that it had to go.

I’ve defined hard and soft edges within the rose. I’ve also shaded-in the background with light hatching and my blending brush. Since it’s small and stiff, the blending brush was precise enough to add the striped shadows without extra hatching. Unfortunately, I made the whole background too dark. Damn.

Lightening a big area like this is always a problem because it can’t be done evenly. I’ll use a kneaded eraser to lighten the entire area as evenly as possible. Then I’ll lighten the dark blotches with taps from a small sanded-down vinyl eraser, and I’ll use a 4H pencil tip to darken the light blotches.

A Lighter Background and A Dark Corner
I’ve lightened the background and I think it does look better. It brightens the whole drawing and makes the rose stand out.

A ‘what-if’ notion came to me that a darkened top right corner might highlight the rose and balance the composition better. I like it, but it’s too plain looking as it is, and needs work.

I rely on these notions or ‘inner nudges’ for most of my decisions during a drawing. They come to me as brief visualizations, and I’ve learned to trust them.

When I first started drawing, these inner nudges bugged me to death, but that was because I hadn’t developed my skills very well and had a lot of work to do on my drawings. My inner nudger must have been exhausted, poor thing.

The Leaves
I decided to keep the leaf detail vague, since neither the rose nor the leaves had clear detail in the photo. To my surprise, adding just a few details to the leaves softened their look. Their pointed edges lightened, and the veins broke up the big blocks of their dark value. I like the gentle feeling of them now.

I added a light toothy leaf edge shape in the upper right corner. It adds some interest that mimics the leaves, but I think I’ve overplayed my hand and will pull it back some later on.

This drawing can never be as realistic as some of my other drawings because the reference photo simply does not have enough detail. It’s making me reach farther into myself to complete it than I’m used to doing, but that’s okay.

I have doubts about my talent that flock around me like crows. They perch around the room and caw at me constantly. This drawing has made them extra loud, but I keep drawing anyway. Doing the thing my inner fears say I cannot do is the only antidote to self-doubt I know.

Scars
There’s a practice described in Art and Fear by Bayles and Orland of asking your work what it needs from you. As I came to the end of this drawing, the back petal of this rose was nearly shouting at me, so I asked the drawing what it needed. The answer I got in a visual flash was ‘scars on the petal.’ My imperfect rose needed to be more visibly imperfect, so I added scars. Then I extended the scarring to the front petal, as my inner nudging prompted me to do.

Inner Details
And still there was nudging. The inner petals seemed too perfect. I tried justifying them to myself by explaining that they were still in the process of being formed, but I didn’t buy it.

I’d already gleaned every detail from my photo that was possible, but the drawing still demanded more. So from here on, I just made stuff up.

I’m happy enough with this drawing now. There is no more inner nudging. It’s been replaced by anxiety that I could have done better. Evidently my personality requires a certain amount of angst to run properly. I think this drawing is a self-portrait; a gray rose, in a gray setting, with a hidden center and scarred outer petals. Ouch. Art is revealing.

It may help you understand how I feel my way through a drawing by way of inner nudges if you know that I’m an INFP in the Myers–Briggs personality type theory. To put it briefly, being an INFP means there’s nothing in life I don’t have strong feelings about. Really. I’ve named our landscape rocks.

A lot of INFPs are artists. If you are, from my heart to yours, keep making your art.

Until next time, keep drawing,
Carol