This is part two of a freehand drawing series – and this will be a much more complicated subject, using the same process! (See the first part here. Bring pencil and paper to draw along!)
In part 1 we talked a lot about blocking in, and did more chatting on the Zoom call that followed it. So today – I chose a complex flower with a lot of blossoms, just to see how hard creating those shapes would be. And the technique worked out great!
Get out some paper and a pencil, and a kneaded eraser if you have one – and we’ll make a drawing during the video. You can draw the inital blocked in portion with me in realtime then I’ll speed it up – but give you lots of tips along the way so you can finish up your drawing!
Tutorial: How to draw complex subjects FREEHAND
Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!
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Blocked-in sketch
Create the overall shape of the whole stem, a bit of a lava lamp shape (ha!) sketch in a couple of the biggest flowers, then once you’ve got the scale of the big ones set, it’s easier to get the smaller buds to scale.
Don’t stress out about detail yet – this is all about getting the shapes in place!
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Completed sketch
Now that the shapes are in place, take another look to be sure nothing looks awry – then you can start in on creating some of the more specific shapes.
When it’s a very complicated subject, I often look for the standout elements – here the dark centers were important for setting the first of the big flowers in place.
You can jump around to draw all the darks in first, but you can also work from one end of the drawing to another–because the overall shapes and their scale are already in place from blocking in!
Other pencil nature sketches
The allium in the first pic is in another book – cream paper, no dotted lines. The others are in the Kanso Noto with white paper and dotted grid.
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I think it’s a great approach breaking down even complex shapes like a multi-blossom flower into simple blocks makes freehand drawing way less intimidating and really practical to follow along.
It’s how I learned – just figure out how to break things down and anything becomes draw-able 🙂