How to Draw Tulips

Thanks to greenhouses live or freshly cut tulips can be easily obtained at any time of the year. Whether they are growing from the ground or freshly-cut specimens sitting in a vase of water, tulips make a great subject for a drawing. You can choose to use pencil, charcoal or pen and ink to create a black and white drawing or go with a set of colored pencils, design markers or crayons to create a colorful rendition. A drawing can be the final artistic effort or you can use the drawings as a beginning of a painting.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Hard pencil, pen, charcoal or colored pencil
• Drawing paper or sketch pad
• Fresh tulips

How to Draw Tulips

1. Start with drawing the shape of just one flower. Tulips are relatively straightforward, since they have few leaves. The two things you have to concern yourself with are the flower head, which is a "U" shape and the long narrow stem that supports the flower head.

2. Make many quick sketches before attempting a more detailed drawing. The idea of a quick sketch is to become familiar with the overall shape of the flower and also to explore the relationship between the shadow and highlighted areas of the flower.

3. Make your tulip look three-dimensional. This can be done by adding shading to the darker areas of the flower and choosing a viewpoint that shows some of the inside parts of the flower. The stem as well as the flower head will reveal a dark side as well as a light side. Use repeated strokes with the pen or pencil to build up the dark side, but let the white of the paper shine through to create a highlight.

4. Use cross-hatching to help give the tulip its form. To give shadow and depth to the stem simply use heavy cross-hatching on the shadow side and then just use light cross-hatching or a few light strokes to portray the highlighted half of the stem. Drawing the flower is not very different in that you will have a darker shadow side and also the highlights or lighter side of the flower head. However, you must study the tulip closely, because wherever there is overlap among the colorful petals, there will will also be a darker area that requires more cross-hatching and shadows.

5. Make a picture with more than one tulip in the composition. This requires no new drawings skills, just more detailed observations and a more concentrated drawing effort. Take time your time when attempting the multiple rendition and don't forget that many less-detailed preliminary sketches will pave the way for a well-crafted final drawing.

6. Add color to your drawing, if you like. This can be done with colored pencils or crayons and requires a different set of observations than those required for making a drawing in black and white. Remember that shadows are not only darker, but they reveal a whole different range of hues that lean towards the blue side of the color spectrum. It will take many, close observations and numerous sketches to really understand the nature of shadows and color.

Tips & Warnings

• Go to your local (or regional ) art museum and see if there are any paintings with tulips in them. Study the paintings and see how the artist handled the subject manner. If tulips are not in bloom outdoors, then you might be able to obtain a small number of tulips from a florist. The natural lighting provided by the sun can help illuminate the tulip in a way that reveals its three-dimensional form.
• A photograph of tulips may be used as a visual reference, but this method is not recommended. It is almost always better to work from the real thing rather than copying from a photographic reproduction.