I spend a lot of time deciding what to draw next. I love perusing through reference images on Pixabay and Adobe Stock. I look at images on Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration.
I study every growing thing I pass in my yard or on a walk. When I am shopping at the Farmer’s Market, I am imagining the things I could draw rather than the things I could eat (okay, it is both:)
The reason this is important is that you are going to be spending a lot of time working on your drawing- maybe days, maybe weeks. You want to make sure you really love it. Also, if you run into a challenge in your piece, you will be more likely to want to work through it because you really want to complete this drawing. If you are so/so with your reference and you make a mistake or run into a challenge, it will be easy for you to quit and say “I don’t really like it anyway.”
Last summer, I was asked to do a drawing of a Sunflower for a friend. While I think Sunflowers in nature are very beautiful, they can be tricky to draw because of their large brown/black, seedy centers. I searched through countless reference images to find one that minimized the look of those centers and would still work for my friend. No luck. So, here is the reference I initially picked:
It is pretty, right? But I didn’t love it and, somehow knew it wasn’t quite right. I think this affected my half-hearted attempts to draw that VERY challenging center. I tried twice to draw this and finally decided to keep searching until I found a reference I loved. And with this renewed attitude, I quickly came across this one.
This one had the WOW factor that I was looking for. And, while it still had the challenging centers, I knew I could draw it because I was excited to draw it! I knew I would find a way to make it work. I could have saved myself a lot of hassle and time if I had persisted in finding a great reference from the start.
Here is the final drawing.
The love and excitement you have for the drawing will show through in the end. Your heart will be in it. In fact, I would not be surprised if you guys can tell which of my own drawings I do not really love. There are a few.😳 Looking back on these, I realize that they were doomed from the start.
I had another artist tell me recently that she is bored with drawing flowers and she really wants to try drawing portraits. My advice? Do it! You have to look forward to what you are planning to draw next. I am personally endlessly inspired by nature and can’t get enough of Botanical Art. But, other artists feel the same way about portraits or animals or birds or landscapes. When you are drawing what you love, it will show.
Don’t draw something boring just because it looks easy, either. Challenge yourself toward something that excites you- that you love, that is worth working to create. Tony Robbins says, “People are not lazy. They just don’t have goals that excite them.”
If you find yourself unmotivated to work on a drawing, ask yourself ‘why’? It might just be that you don’t REALLY love your reference.
To learn more about how I create my botanical colored pencil drawings, check out my Patreon site at https://www.patreon.com/JenniferMorrisonArt.
And, for a complete list of my available colored pencil drawing tutorials see jennifermorrisonart.com/patreontutoriallinks.
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