How to Draw Lily Pads
A water lily consists of a white or pink blossom floating over or next to a leaf, or lily pad, that sits on top of a still water source. Ancient Egyptian priests and rulers were buried wearing necklaces made of water lilies, which were a symbol of resurrection from the dead. Today, these water flowers continue to serve as a source of inspiration for artists. Your drawing of a water lily will be incomplete without a lily pad, which you can easily draw by beginning with a circular base and building on it.
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Instructions
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1
Draw a circle. Press down lightly on the paper because you will need to erase and edit a part of the circle later on.
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2
Draw a smaller circle inside the original circle, making sure that a point on the smaller circle's circumference touches a point on the larger circle's circumference. The diameter of the smaller circle should measure about 1/4 or 1/5 of the original circle's diameter. Draw another circle of the same dimension next to the first small circle. The two small circles should touch, forming a curved triangle shape between them and the large circle's circumference.
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3
Erase the portion of the large circle that helps form the curved triangle. The large circle should now look like it has an indentation. Erase half of each small circle's circumference; this is the half that is not helping form the curved triangle.
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4
Color the lily pad. Use diagonal strokes to fill in the entire pad with a shade of green. Add more diagonal strokes using yellow and another shade of green. Use the darkest shade of green you have to add even more strokes to the middle of the lily pad to represent the shadows that would naturally fall on it.
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Use the darkest shade of green to draw lines that begin at the center of the lily pad and emanate toward its edge. These are the veins. These lines should not be perfectly straight and should, ideally, have smaller lines coming off them--similar to the smaller branches coming off the many nodes of a main branch.
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Tips & Warnings
If you're drawing a lily pad floating on water, use a series of short, straight lines coming off the lily pad's edge to represent the shadow that would be cast by the pad onto the water. There should be minimal space between these short lines. Draw them using a darker shade of the color you used to represent the water.
