Making Art Every Day
The September 2025 art challenge by @bardotbrush with @lisabardotinvites participation in creating and sharing artwork. Artists will explore colors, techniques, and tutorials, fostering creativity together. The color palettes today were created by artist Ana Bianchi @analovescolor. I try to spend less than 30 minutes on these.
Prompt: Geranium
I’m a bit behind. On September 14th the prompt was Geranium with a terra cotta color palette. Remember that I had watched Lisa Bardot’s tutorial on YouTube for drawing a house with Lisa’s Gouache Paintbox and Imperfect Pattern brushes. So I decided to follow that process again for the geranium. I used a LOT of layers and some clipping masks for shadows and highlights. I thought I might need some contour lines to delineate the flowers and leaves, but the shadows and shading in related lighter/darker colors did that for me. I also added highlights throughout the illustration to add pops of reflective colors.
My granddaughter isn’t feeling well, so it became a get well soon card for her.
Replay: Note that I found a reference image, whose leaves I rearranged to have starting point for my sketch. Lisa Bardot encourages us to learn by sketching with reference images, tracing areas when needed. My sketch includes areas for shading and highlights and any color variations that help create the floral. I wasn’t real particular about the sketch, just quickly drew in the plant and pat, so I was worried how it would turn out. However, I really like how the flowers — with hues of the bright orange in shadows and highlights– it ends up looking just like geraniums.
To add shadow and highlights, I alpha locked the layer. For shadows, I freehand selected all the sections of a color, then brushed in the shadows. Sometimes I did this with clipping masks for the highlights. That way, with texture brushes that spread easily, I only brush the paint into the area I want colored.
If you have any questions, just ask in the comments.
I wonder, if I draw a line... 