Flowering Dogwood

Flowering Dogwood

pen and ink

8 x 8 in.

2022

Getting back into the swing of things with pen and ink and thinking of ways to sell my work in the future, I thought I would try an idea I recently had of taking a drawing, scanning it, and printing it onto different colored paper. Here is an end example example of that concept.

I think by using mainly colors revolving around the pastel hues, it can subtly highlight the drawing and the details in the drawing with out overpowering it too much. With more of these botanical and more natural illustrations, earth tones may work best. My goal with this is to in the future create a series of botanical illustrations, where I can then sell prints of them on these papers varying in color; giving variety and customizability to what people may prefer when purchasing art like this for their own homes.

I haven’t drawn flowers in an extremely long time, so I thought I would get back to doing some, and I really enjoyed this one! I tried to focus mainly on the textures on the branches and blossoms, which I think helped in adding some detail to an otherwise simple illustration.

This illustration is depicting a flowering dogwood. The dogwood tree; also known as Cornus florida, can be mainly found in the Eastern United States and span from coastal Maine to northern Florida. The dogwood tree produces beautiful, small flowers that are usually white that later produce red berries, and the roots can be used as a remedy for malaria.