Drawing Flowers

Victor Perard

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486137148
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Techniques

A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, acclaimed artist and illustrator Victor Perard emigrated to the United States in the 1930s and taught at New York City's Cooper Union for twenty years. His popular series of art instructional books covers the essentials on drawing — and his illuminating advice continues to help students and teachers today. In this illustrated guide to drawing Mother Nature's most beautiful flowers, Perard plants seeds of inspiration for artists of every ability. Dozens of black-and-white images highlight various techniques, as he shows how the variety of lines can add texture, light or movement to garden favorites. There are violets, daisies, and daffodils abloom, plus chrysanthemums, lilacs, lilies, and more. With a natural affinity for flowers of every kind, Perard reveals the rewards of this artistic effort — developing a sense of composition and an eye for balance in design. Includes a list of state flowers.

FOREWORD

Flowers are graceful and delicate. Their form and coloring are varied and demonstrate a most surprising vigor or, at the opposite extreme, an exquisite lightness. Drawing flowers will help an artist develop a sense of composition and an eye for rhythmic balance of design, both of which are very important in any artist’s training. To draw flowers of many sorts, and yet to maintain their individual characteristics, obliges the student to draw with care as well as trains the eye and hand to coordinate in order to achieve the best results. The correct rendering of a flower is a severe test, but the necessity of close observation well repays any effort involved.

Before attempting to draw any flowers, you must obtain the right materials to work with. They are an H. B. and a B. B. B. drawing pencil, a rubber eraser, a pliable pen, a small camel’s-hair brush, some black ink, and a pad of paper eight by twelve inches in size. More art materials than these at the start will lead only to confusion and prevent skillfulness in any medium. It is better to use a few mediums proficiently than to use many, but none well.

Treat your art materials with respect: take good care of them. Drawings should be made neatly and look professional. They can be begun with the H. B. pencil, which makes a light line. This way any mistake is easily corrected by erasing. To use the dark B. B. B. pencil too soon may ruin your picture because its lines are not easily erased. A heavy dark line is not only impressed on the paper, but it also is impressed in your mind and makes it difficult to imagine the composition in any way other than that already on the paper. Keep all the preliminary lines light.

Before touching pencil to paper, plan your work; try to visualize what you intend to draw and the style of technique that you intend to use. Learn to select the principal lines of the subject and sketch them in lightly first. The details will fall into place with ease. The first lines made are usually the most important, and the last ones are of ...