My First Florabunda Drawings

The third of three posts for today.

After I won the lovely Florabunda book from Neil’s blog giveaway, I started experimenting. I cut some pieces of plain white card and also found some narrow offcut strips to make borders with, and got my Zentangle drawing pens out and started to have fun!

These are the little border pieces I did. They are 5 1/2 inches long.

With the book, Neil sent me a lovely little Zentangle card with my initial on it, so I decided to start making a set of alphabet letters in the Florabunda style. So far I’ve got to E. Each one measures 2 3/4 inches square.

A couple of circular designs.

In the book, I love Suzanne McNeill’s use of pods and gone-over flowers as well as all the pretty petals. Here’s my first take on this. They look a bit half-dead, with some of the leaves drooping and dropping off!

Some stylised leaves on a curve.

All these last ones are 4 3/4 inches square.

My plan is to draw a good collection of these Florabunda designs, and then scan and print them. I can then make up a collection of cards quite quickly, and colour them how I want, in a variety of ways, giving different interpretations to the same designs and seeing which I prefer. I am keen to try adding colours with my new Brusho paints in an uncontrolled way so that the detailed drawing sits on a suitably-coloured background, giving contrast between fine detail and random colour. The shapes can also be coloured with markers, watercolours, coloured pencils… As with the adult drawing pages, the possibilities are endless. These drawings also stand alone with no colour. So many different variations and so much possibility to have fun! For me at the moment one of the great advantages is that I can do them while relaxing on the recliner.