Botanical Drawing in Color

Wendy Hollander's instructional guidebook on drawing botanicals in colored pencil is a beginner's guide to mastering the realistic form of plants.  As colored pencil artists know, in every colored pencil book there are the usual chapters on art supplies, how to use colored pencils, and color theory.  This book is no different.  What is different are the instructions on mastering this particular subject matter. These may include how to depict elements that overlap, understanding the form of plants, determining what parts of a plant to include and ignore in your drawings, measuring your subject matter in perspective, and how to plan a composition.

The book is filled with exercises for readers to practice.  The author recommends that the reader practice each exercise even if they already know how to do the exercise.  While many of the author's own drawings are shown, she prefers that readers not use them as a guide for exercises.  It is best to use your own plants and learn your own style of drawing.  The exercises fill about 75% of the book and cover topics such as how to draw a cup and a ribbon that twists and turns, taking a flower apart and drawing each part of it separately before drawing the entire flower, and drawing under magnification.

If the reader follows the author's advice and uses their own plants in the exercises, they will come away with knowledge on how to create their own drawing designs in the future.  In this regard the book helps an artist become creative on their own.  Personally, I have been taking my time with the exercises and am considering a thirty to sixty day plan for working on them daily.  I then should be able to create a final design.  Right?  We shall see.