Staycation Art #5: What a Bud Can Teach You About Fearless Drawing

By drawing a bud opening to a flower you will experience wonder and awe for nature and the life force. Follow the directions. What do you have to lose?

Possible side effects may include:

• improved observational skills
• improved drawing skills
• a calmer and happier state of mind
• a work of art.

Each row in the above drawing needs to be looked at from right to left. I’m left handed — that kept it from smudging.

Directions: You will need a bud that you can watch as it stretches out and transforms. If you are unable to get a living bud to watch, use the above drawing or the photos below as models. Click on the image to enlarge or print.

Draw the transformation from bud to flower. Feel the thrill of it in your own bones.

The bud protects it’s contents at their most tender stages. As you draw, think about pushing out of your own protective sheath and blossoming in a way that is unique to you. What might your own flowering be like? What if the bud stayed closed because it was afraid that its blossom wouldn’t be good enough?

If you get really into this, you could call yourself a Bud-ist.

When I began the above drawing, I dug up a daffodil to bring inside. It had two stems, and I planned to draw one set of of them each day. When I started, one bud casing had just begun to split revealing a glimpse of yellow inside. The other bud case was tightly closed.

The buds opened so fast that I could barely keep up. Imagine that, I was rushing to keep up with a bud opening — drawing does change you sense of time. I was done with all eight sets in a day and a half.

The daffodil put forth the effort for the flower to break out of it’s sheath and bloom – it was propelled from deep within it’s DNA. It’s biological imperative required that it give that effort it’s very best. Can you do the exercise with the same single pointed intensity that the bud uses to burst forth and transform?

If you fall in love with drawing, you will do what it takes to learn what you need to know to express yourself. Techniques and skills can be researched and learned but you won’t have the energy to learn them if your life force isn’t connected to the process. It is my hope that these lessons will get you to fall in love with the drawing process so that you can watch your artwork bud and bloom.

Many things such as linear and aerial perspective are covered here (to a degree) in the archives. To look through lessons from before the Staycation Series, click on Weekly Art Lessons Archive in the menu bar.

Happy drawing.