This is such a lovely drawing. Orchids are a challenge and you have done a great job with the drawing those delicate petals. That veination is exquisite. Compositionally,I love the intricate little flowers balancing the flat shapes of the leaves. I think you can go a bit darker in the shadows in the flowers. I’m losing the details. Be sure to sharpen your pencil!
Nice Helene, I would echo everything Katy said. I’m itching to grab some darker colored pencils and get in there in some spots. It wouldn’t take much. You are already showing how the center column and lip come out forward toward the viewer, and you can tell that those two bottom petals are behind. Good job. Now push that a little further. I want to see some bits of really dark values in the areas where the darkest shadows would be in the overlapping areas of those petals/column, especially toward the center. Same with the leaves. You could add some darks around the area where the stem sinks down in between those leaves, and show the parallel veining some more by carefully drawing those vein shadows down in that area, and then fading them out as they get travel toward the tips of the leaves. Lovely work.
Thank you very much Katy and Pam for your very helpful comments. I am working on following your suggestions and the challenge that I find is to add and not ‘mess up’ what was done before.
10 February 2022
Do some practice with tracing paper and add a few darks to test it out! 🙂
This is such a lovely drawing. Orchids are a challenge and you have done a great job with the drawing those delicate petals. That veination is exquisite. Compositionally,I love the intricate little flowers balancing the flat shapes of the leaves. I think you can go a bit darker in the shadows in the flowers. I’m losing the details. Be sure to sharpen your pencil!
Nice Helene, I would echo everything Katy said. I’m itching to grab some darker colored pencils and get in there in some spots. It wouldn’t take much. You are already showing how the center column and lip come out forward toward the viewer, and you can tell that those two bottom petals are behind. Good job. Now push that a little further. I want to see some bits of really dark values in the areas where the darkest shadows would be in the overlapping areas of those petals/column, especially toward the center. Same with the leaves. You could add some darks around the area where the stem sinks down in between those leaves, and show the parallel veining some more by carefully drawing those vein shadows down in that area, and then fading them out as they get travel toward the tips of the leaves. Lovely work.
Thank you very much Katy and Pam for your very helpful comments. I am working on following your suggestions and the challenge that I find is to add and not ‘mess up’ what was done before.
Do some practice with tracing paper and add a few darks to test it out! 🙂