How to Draw FLOWERS using Basic SHAPES (Pt 2) + LANDSCAPES

Hey, I'm Darlene and you're watching a RapidFireArt tutorial. In the last video, we learned how to draw various flowers using basic shapes during the construction phase. In this video, let's draw more complex plants, increasing the difficulty as we go along, and then we'll even draw some landscapes. If you haven't watched part 1 yet, I'll include the link in the description. Let's start. What basic shapes do you see for this flower? Try to start with as few shapes as possible. I'm going to group the stems into one big rectangle and the top into a large triangle. If at this point your drawing isn't in the right spot on your page, or it isn't the right size, you can very easily and quickly move it elsewhere. You can check the accuracy of each of your angles by first holding your pencil up in front of your reference. Keep your pencil locked into the angle that you want to check, and then slide it over to your drawing. That's close enough for me. Let's check this one. This angle could be a little steeper. Let's fix that quickly. See if you want to make any other changes before you draw smaller shapes. I think my stems could be longer. Feel free to take creative liberties wherever you see fit. Your drawing doesn't need to look exactly like the reference photo. The flower bud looks like it starts at roughly the halfway point of the rectangle. I can draw it using an ellipse. You can draw two individual rectangles for each of the stems. That's probably enough shapes for me. At this point, I'm confident I can draw the flower without sketching any more basic shapes, but feel free to continue drawing more, for example a triangle over here, and various ovals. Here I'm just drawing two ticks to mark where the green part of the sepals end. If there's a lot going on in a certain section of my reference photo, I like to break it up using a simple line. Then I can focus on one section at a time, without getting distracted by all the information I'm seeing all at once. I'm using some triangles to plan out in slightly more detail the angle of the petals. By constructing your drawing using shapes, you can draw more quickly and more accurately. If you practice this enough, eventually you may be able to skip the shape construction process on paper, and do it all in your head instead. I think the stamens together form a trapezoid. Sketching the trapezoid first gives me a container to draw the stamens in. Here's a more difficult one. Except for the stem, what single basic shape can you use to describe this plant? You might see one large triangle. Remember to check if your lines are angled correctly. This one isn't quite steep enough. Also remember to check your angles again after you make a correction. I'm using a single line for the stem, just to quickly get the angle down. These construction lines are too vague for me to draw the flower accurately, so I'm going to draw a few more until I feel comfortable to add those defining strokes. Just looking at the boundary of each petal here, I'm seeing an oval. Well, part of one. This section looks very triangular. Experiment with different shape combos to see what works best for you. Your shapes don't need to encompass the entire flower. So I think I'm ready to draw the details now. If you want to draw even more shapes first, you can use ovals for the petals. They might not look exactly similar in shape, but the ovals can help you quickly place down elements before you commit to the details. So what shapes do you see for this image? If you're comfortable with it, try drawing only the shapes that you need, instead of all the shapes that you see, to avoid clutter, because there's a lot going on in this particular image. So be strategic with what shapes you choose to draw, and which shapes you would rather visualize and keep in the back of your mind. Like visualizing each individual finger as multiple rectangles, instead of actually sketching them on the page. One thing that makes this photo difficult to draw is all the detail. If it's tripping you up, squint your eyes until the details are blurry, so you can focus on the overall shapes. For example, instead of looking at each stem and each rose on its own, look at clusters or groups of things. Here I'm seeing how far along this edge the rose starts. It seems to be at the halfway point, so I'll just mark that spot on my sketch. You can draw the same thing using any number of shapes. You can even switch to 3D shapes, if that helps you draw it more convincingly. I'm using these lines to create boundaries between groups of roses that appear to cluster together, so that my brain has an easier time at processing the image. Otherwise, my eyes will continuously jump around, making it very difficult to focus. A problem that you might have come across before when drawing detailed things, like wavy hair. Sectioning areas of your drawing off will help immensely when drawing even more complicated subjects. So I used different shapes to draw the roses. Some are super vague, like rectangles. So you don't have to use the same exact shape or shapes to draw the same type of thing. I'm just going to roughly draw all the details and move on to the next example. Alright, so I made a mistake here where I forgot to align the top half of the stem to the bottom portion, so it looks either very bent or just disconnected. I definitely sacrificed accuracy in favor of speed here. If you're drawing a stem that is hidden behind something, in this example it's the hand, draw a line all the way from point A to point B to make sure your stem is straight. Before we continue, I want to introduce you to the awesome sponsor for this video, Skillshare, an online learning community for creative and curious people, offering thousands of classes on topics like fine art, illustration, graphic design, photography, and so much more. Pretty much all the topics that I'm interested in. That's just one reason that enticed me to join Skillshare. With high quality content, I don't lose time searching, I can start learning right away without any hurdles or distracting ads. With a vast variety of topics and teachers to choose from, it makes it so easy to find things that I want to learn and discover brand new topics that excite and inspire me. A class that I seriously love is Chris Hong's class called Steps to Creating Vivid Portraits with Colored Pencils. She broke down a topic I was previously scared of and made it so easy to understand. And I love her colorful style. A key takeaway I learned was that I can use any color I want as long as the portrait still reads well in grayscale. I need to practice way more, but I already see a huge improvement from my previous work. Skillshare classes are well-structured, broken down into smaller lessons so I know exactly what I'm getting into and I can quickly jump back and forth between lessons to reference material as I draw. Skillshare is offering the first 1,000 people to use the link in my description box or my code RAPIDFYART, a 1-month free trial of Skillshare, so you can start exploring your creativity today. Okay, this one's very weirdly shaped. If you're tempted to draw an ambiguous shape around the subject, take a minute to see how you can divide up parts of the bonsai tree and then try again. Experiment with different shapes by doing tiny sketches so you can more quickly get an idea of what works and what doesn't before you commit to drawing a full-sized version. Give yourself 2 or 3 minutes for each one so you can get as many ideas out as possible. I kind of see a square here. A circle right here. And this part of the tree looks kind of like a triangle to me. Okay, I find that starting with a circle is too vague, making it difficult to draw the subject accurately, so for my larger scale version, I'll break the subject into smaller sections right from the beginning. Usually, I like to start with 1-3 large shapes that encompass the whole subject, but sometimes, the subject can be so complex that you'll benefit more from using many small shapes. To understand where to draw the top of the bonsai tree, I'm checking the angle that forms if I draw a straight line from these edges. The entire top of the bonsai tree looks like a semicircle to me. To improve your accuracy further, pay attention to the negative space around your subject too. Does the negative space in the photo look similar to the one in your sketch? I'm going for a quick drawing and not too concerned about accuracy, but if you want to be extra accurate, measure and compare as much as you can. For example, measure the height of the pot and compare it to the length. Looks like the length is 3 times the height. If you use the height of the pot as a unit of measurement, you can see that the subject is 5 pots tall. For complicated, detailed subjects, it's a good idea to take a few minutes just to get familiar with what you're looking at. This process will help you draw it with more likeness. Here's an example where my eyes keep jumping around, having a difficult time focusing on one thing. Let's break it down into simple shapes, which will help us process it more easily. The jar is like a rectangle with a round top and bottom. If we draw a rectangle and two ellipses, we can create a 3D cylinder, which is convenient because the jar is cylindrical. How far left should we draw the lid? We can measure this space and compare it to the width of the jar. And it looks like the jar is just a little bit wider. I drew a triangle here because to me, this area looks like a triangle. And I thought it would be helpful, but I don't think it is. I think it should have been something I kept in the back of my mind, not something to sketch on the page. We can use two lines for the plant stems. You can check if the angle is correct by holding your pencil up to match the angle of the thing you're measuring, and compare it to your own drawing. If you're dealing with a curve, you can check the angle from end to end, or break the curve up into different angles, based on the flattest parts. Instead of thinking of the stems as two lines, you can also draw them using two triangles. To draw the water's edge inside the jar, we can use an ellipse. This type of plant looks very complicated. Instead of picking out the shape of each individual flower right away, try for the entire cluster. On the left side, I see an ellipse that's cut off at the bottom, like a popsicle. On the right, I see a trapezoid. Is this amount of shapes enough for you to add details, or do you want to continue building more shapes? That's up to you to decide and discover for yourself. For each flower, I'm going to draw it using a circle or ellipse, whatever shape fits the specific flower. Then I'm going to draw the details freehand. If you want to break the flower down to each petal, you can use lightly drawn ovals like we did in the very first example from the previous video. For front-facing flowers, it helps to identify the center of the flower first, so you have something to center your petals around. If you're afraid of having your shapes show through in your final drawing, lighten up your pencil strokes first. Just light enough that you can still see it. I forgot to sketch an ellipse for this metal piece. Okay, now I can use all my shapes as guides for the final drawing. If you want, you can continue to sketch lightly. I'm just trying to save time and save you from boredom by drawing very dark right away. The more detail you add, the easier it will feel to finish the rest of your drawing. It's kind of like how easy it is to finish a jigsaw puzzle when you only have a handful of pieces left. From the side, I think this flower looks like a rectangle and ellipse. For this flower, I already drew a circle, but I also see two trapezoids. For this side-facing flower, I'm going to use circles and ovals. Let's try some nature scenes and landscapes now. Imagine this rectangle is your sketchbook. You can measure the length and width of the photo and divide by some number to fit the size of your sketchbook. I'm just going to eye this though. Okay, so here's my approach for landscapes. I like to find the horizon line and draw that first, dividing the page in two. Makes it much easier to draw and process the photo. The mountains look like triangles, but before I draw them, I like to mark, usually along the margins, where they should be drawn on the page. Many times, I find things line up quite perfectly if I divide the photo in three or just once down the middle. If I divide this photo into thirds, the first line lands on the tip of the leftmost mountain, and the second line kind of lands in this valley between mountain and cloud. Don't forget to observe the negative space too. To me, the negative space here forms a circle. The tree is positioned slightly to the left of the first vertical line, and we can draw the tree simply using a circle and a line. I'm just going to scribble in the remaining details. If you really want to, you can find shapes in the field of flowers. I see a lot of triangles. What about you? Do you think you can sketch this scene in under 10 minutes? Create one or a few tiny sketches to see if you can quickly break the reference image down without getting too caught up in the little details. Again, I'm starting with the horizon line. Let's divide the page vertically as well. Do you want to divide it in two, three, or more? The subject seems to be centered in the image, so I think I'll split my rectangle in half, vertically, so that as I sketch the subject, I don't need to constantly check whether I'm still drawing in the center of the page or not. I'm grouping parts of the giraffe and tree together to speed things up, and because the scale of my drawing is just so tiny. The large mountain looks like a trapezoid, but I like to draw unimportant details like this with less thought. And then once everything looks like it's in the right place, I'm just filling in the details. On a larger scale, you may want to break your subject down into smaller shapes before you draw the details. But doing these tiny sketches helps you quickly brainstorm different container shape combos and take your mind off the details, especially if you're a detail-oriented person, because it makes it almost impossible for you to draw those small details. This image looks super complicated. Take a moment to observe it and think about how and where you would start. Just like the previous two examples, I'm starting with the horizon line. Now for the vertical lines. I could split the image into three to give the subject boundary lines and assist me with drawing the trees. Or I could do just one line down the middle, going through the flowerpot. Since this is a complicated image, I want to reduce clutter, so I'll choose this single line but still keep the other two lines in the back of my mind. Let's quickly sketch the trees. They look like circles to me. As I'm sketching these circles, I'm thinking of where they should be positioned along my drawing space, visualizing those extra two vertical lines running down the page. I think she's sitting on a boat. Instead of drawing a small shape to represent only the visible part of the boat, I'm drawing a line across the entire page, making sure the angle is similar to the photo. I'm doing this because I want to make sure that when I draw the girl, she looks as though she's sitting on it instead of floating amongst the flowers. For the flowerpot, I'll simply draw a circle and triangle to make sure the placement looks right. Since it's a very crowded image, you'll benefit a lot from simplifying your subjects as much as possible during this beginning stage. We're just trying to make sure that the major elements are in the right place and sized correctly. For the girl, use whichever shapes you see. You might draw her entire body using a rectangle. If you want, you can make elements bigger so they stand out. Don't feel like you need to copy the image exactly. I don't know if you can tell, but I've enlarged the subject because I think it's more suitable for a drawing. This tree is not in the right place. This is what I like about constructing my drawings using lightly sketched basic shapes. I can move them quickly and easily. Once you have all the main elements done, go around and fill in the rest, without creating too much clutter and confusion. I'm feeling impatient, so I'm going to draw some of the details now and then go back to the sea of flowers. I think this shape is enough for me to draw the pot. If you want to break it down more, please feel free to do that. I'm drawing a line here to mark the boundary between the petals and the stems. The flowers look like circles and ovals to me. I'm going to roughly draw all the petals. If you need a few more shapes to draw the girl more accurately, try an extra rectangle for her neck, a circle for this part of her hair, or a triangle for her arms. For all the leaves and flowers in the foreground and background, I'm mostly constructing them out of circular shapes, sometimes triangles. Feel free to move things around if you want. I don't really want to draw all the details in the background, so I'm going to cheat and make up some of my own flowers and large leaves that take up most of the space, so I don't have to draw too much. For the trees, I'm using the circles as a rough guide, just roughly scribbling in the outline of leaves. Here's a quick tip. If you want to put more emphasis on the main subject or focal point of your drawing, lighten parts that are not very important. To do that, I'm using my kneaded eraser to lift some graphite from the background. See how it brings out the girl more? Here's a before and after. Which one do you prefer? Thank you for sticking with me to the end. If you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you want to see more. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one!