Sketching

So I've been trying to work more from life than from photographs when I can, it's good practice.  When I have fresh flowers, I always think, "I have to do something with these before they start to wilt!", but that rarely ever happens. But lately I have been drawing some of my flowers after they've started wilting and it's kind of fun, and makes an interesting sketch. This was a yellow gerbera daisy, one of my favorite kinds of flowers. (Ok I have a lot of favorite kinds of flowers, I just really love all of them!) I sketched it in pencil as it sat in an old blue wine bottle I use as a vase.

This next one I did last week, I had been given a potted flower plant for my birthday and it had started to die. (It's even more dead now, no matter that I keep it watered and sitting in the window. Potted plants just always die on me *sniff*). I used colored pencil on this one.

This plant was very funny, because the night my friend gave it to me, we were at a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. When she handed it to me, all three flowers were just buds. But every time I would look at it, one of the buds seemed to be opening up really fast. By the time we left, maybe 2 hours later, that one bud was fully open and I was afraid it was almost going to die, start wilting right there. Of the other 2 buds, one was open a bit and the last was still a bud. I've never seen a flower bloom so quickly! I wanted to draw this because I loved the way the leaves were all twisting and turning and curving around each other and I loved the gorgeous bright spring green they were. The flowers petals were also fun to sketch. :)