How to Draw a Geranium in Colored Pencils

Geranium by Robert A. Sloan

Colored pencils are a clean, convenient medium that can get very detailed, realistic results. Geraniums are a bit tricky because the flowers are a cluster and some of the blossoms are at different angles. Draw what you see, not what you think you see, and your geranium drawings will be powerfully realistic! By using a colorless blender, we'll create light colors from dark without getting the "tonal layers" look.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• 24 color set of colored pencils, or larger
• Prismacolor Colorless Blender pencil
• HB pencil
• Kneaded eraser
• White vinyl eraser
• Drawing paper or sketchbook
• Workable matte fixative
• Graphite transfer paper

1. Contour drawing of geranium flower head with leaves and buds

   Copy my contour sketch of a geranium flower head, stem and leaves, or print it out to transfer using graphite transfer paper. You can make your own graphite transfer paper by taking a soft graphite pencil, 2B or higher B or graphite stick that soft, and covering a sheet of printer paper in an area larger than the sketch with heavy scribbles till it's got no white spaces.

   Turn that graphite side down on your drawing paper, put the printout of the line sketch on it and draw over it with a sharp pointed hard pencil, HB or H or 2H or harder.

   H pencils are hard, the higher the number the paler the line and the more they groove the paper. You can get a very sharp point on an H pencil. B pencils are black, they are softer and lines will smudge if you rub them with your finger or a blender. HB is exactly in the middle and can be used for both making the graphite transfer paper and, sharpened, for tracing to transfer a design. HB is a No. 2 ordinary pencil. If you are serious about art as a hobby, you may want to purchase several pencils in different degrees of hardness though as their effects are very different.

   My photo reference was taken from the "Artist's Photo Reference: Flowers" by Gary Greene, a link to the book on Amazon is included in Resources. I combined two photos and rearranged the leaves to do the initial drawing. Scan is dark to show the lines better.

   A contour drawing is just the outlines of an object, sometimes adding outlines of shadows or darker areas. The leaves have a reddish crescent so that is outlined too and some veins are hinted at.

2. Red details on flowers, green outlines and veins on leaves, stems and buds

   If it's too dark, lighten your sketch or tracing of the contour drawing with a kneaded eraser. Press hard on a dark area and peel it off. Lighten it until the lines can barely be seen. The less graphite under the colored pencil, the brighter the final drawing will look. Stretch and fold your kneaded eraser after picking up the imprint to clean it.

   Geraniums come in white, pink, orange, red, fuchsia, lavender, variegated, there are a host of different geranium colors. Many are screaming bright. Mine's going to be pink with red centers on the blossoms, to help identify those partial blossoms that show in the flower head.

   Starting with red-orange, fill in the centers of the blossoms with strong strokes that radiate out from the centers. Go a third to half of the way across the petals. Detail the buds as shown, with a little of the red way back where the green sepals part to show the pink.

   Using a medium green, outline the leaves, stems and sepals of the buds. Use expressive strokes that flick heavier at the start and softer where they leave the paper. Look close at the strokes especially for the veins on the leaves to show this -- heavy at the start, flicking off the paper in the direction of the vein.

3. Dark pink and light yellow green areas applied.

   Using a dark pink, outline all the petals. Do not outline the top of the folded over petal, that's a highlight that'll be filled in with light pink heavily. But outline everything else. Then add some soft tonal shading to the edges of the petals. Tip the buds with the dark pink but don't fill in all the way down to the red, let it trail off lightly.

   With light yellow green, fill the stems and the inside and outer sections of the big leaves, skipping the part that will become a darker crescent. Fill in the green parts of the buds and tiniest leaves heavily with light yellow green. The scan shows this as a green-gold but it is actually the same light yellow green as the buds, just applied more lightly.

4. Light pink shading on petals, dark green on leaves

   Fill in the geranium petals with light pink in a smooth tonal layer, burnishing hard on the petal sections that are in shadow. Fill in the top of that folded petal hard. Burnish hard over any sections that were covered with dark pink to blend, but go light over the white areas to give a better range of shading.

   With a blunt dark green, shade in the crescents on the round leaves that were left white in the last layer. Shade the right side of the big stem a little with it too.

5. Medium green shading on stems and leaves, white burnishing on petals, reddish brown on leaf crescent shapes and bud shading

   Using white, burnish over the light parts of the pink petals till it all has the same smooth heavily drawn texture.

   Shade over the leaves again with a light tonal layer in medium green, using radiating strokes. Flick some in from the edges to create creases from the scallops, it's okay to get a little irregular but make sure all the strokes are radial and fairly soft.

   Using red-brown, detail the buds at the base where they join their stems, shading slightly up and slightly down. Then go over the dark green crescents with the reddish brown using radiating soft strokes to make a smooth tonal layer. All strokes on the leaves should radiate out from the center or in toward the center from the edges. This is important to keep from creating unwanted textures.

6. Nearly complete, one leaf left partially burnished to demonstrate area burnishing with radial strokes

   Using medium green add a few details of sepals in the flower head, looking close for where they would be seen under some of the partial blossoms.

   Using a purplish red, shade in some shadows in the flower head especially when partial flowers are way behind other brighter flowers. Make the folded-over petal pop out by shading its underside with the red-purple. It won't be as strong over those other layers as it would be if you used it by itself, but don't press hard.

   Use the Prismacolor Colorless Blender to blend over the leaves and stems, using heavy strokes. Vertical strokes within the stem, radial strokes within the leaves. Try to burnish the reddish-brown dark crescents separately first and then the inside and outer areas, so they blend at the edges but the red-brown doesn't get dragged all the way out to the edge or into the center.

   Prismacolor Colorless Blender has the soft texture of Prismacolor Premier colored pencils and will combine mixed colors into a heavy rich laydown even if they were light tonal layers drawn in with another brand. If you used oil-based Lyra Rembrandt colored pencils, the Lyra Splender blender would be better with those, but for any other brand, the Prismacolor Colorless Blender will work best. It will give other colored pencils the consistency of Prismacolors in the final burnishing stage.

   To burnish, draw heavily back and forth in a zigzag motion with the blender, filling in solidly. Overlap areas so that everything becomes smooth. By working around the leaves in three rows of radial shading, that makes sure that any streaks help create the impression of veins or creases in the leaf instead of going crosswise to make false shading.

   Sign in the red-purple at the bottom right, under the big leaf.

Tips & Warnings

• Practice copying the sketch a few times, then try sketching directly in colored pencils and skip the graphite stage.

• Try drawing a geranium from life after doing this project, look close at a real one and start with a contour drawing of everything you see.

• Use a Prismacolor Colorless Blender if you want a light shade of a color you have only in a darker shade, but want it textureless as if you drew full strength with it.

• Watch for smudges on the white areas of the paper, lift with kneaded eraser as soon as you see them. Skin oils and sweat can dissolve colored pencil and leave smudges. Use a piece of printer paper under your hand if you start having too much trouble with this, or an artist's hand bridge.

• Don't sharpen the colorless blender to a sharp point, keeping it somewhat blunt works better except for getting into very tiny areas. Wear it down at an angle and use heavily to burnish.

Resources

• Artist's Photo Reference: Flowers (at Amazon)