anika mari

I’ve been working with pens and markers a lot lately. I drew a blossom (below) that also looks like fluttery wings with a rapidograph pen and used various shades of pink markers to achieve a somewhat translucent effect.

I liked the result and took it a little further by creating another drawing of similar pink blossoms and a drawing of purple blossoms with a slightly different character.

When drawing the purple blossoms, I took notice of the smallest center petals. The overlapping lines of the larger petals created a nice texture that was cut through and contained in an interesting way by the central petals, so I created a version of the blossoms with pen only, leaving the petals white.

I made a few copies of the above image, and cut out the smallest center flowers. Then I arranged them on the scanner bed and tried a few different compositions and backgrounds and came up with the following versions.

In some ways I liked the flowers on a white background because it really put the focus on the texture of the lines, but I also wanted to define the edge of the petals.

Maintaining the same composition of the flowers I tried a gray and then a red background.

I liked the vibrant red background which did the best job at enhancing the effect of the texture of the black lines and the edge of the white petals at the same time. I tried two more compositions on red.

I’m happy with where this is going. I can see painting a canvas in vibrant red acrylic and collaging the flowers on it. I just might do that next.