Flowers & Foliage: Drawing Plants & Botanical Illustrations in Procreate
In this beginner-friendly class you'll learn how to draw stylised plants and botanicals.
I'll be using Procreate to demonstrate the class but you're more than welcome to use your preferred drawing tools.
The best part about drawing plants, to me, is being able to play around with shapes - you can have a lot of fun abstracting and stylising as much as you like and as long as you include some basic elements that are recognisable as leaves or flowers, you can’t go too far wrong.
In this class I’m going to show you a few simple methods for stylising your plant shapes and guide you through several easy drawing exercises to help you build confidence in creating your own unique plant designs.
We'll cover:
- Making studies from photo references
- Using shape language in our designs
- Coming up with a variety of leaf shapes
- Different ways of drawing flowers
- Bringing our leaf and flower designs together in a vine or stem structure
- Drawing potted plants
- Simplifying grass and foliage
We’ll start off by making quick studies from photo references, before talking about shape language and how to come up with unique leaf shapes, and look at some simple ways to draw flowers. We’ll then practice putting leaves and flowers together in a vine or stem structure, and we’ll also practice drawing potted plants and grass and foliage, so that you’ll come away with a range of techniques that you can incorporate into your future illustrations.
This is a really low pressure, easy class that’s suitable for total beginners or just anyone who wants to have a bit of fun drawing plants. We’ll focus purely on sketching and drawing plants instead of creating a polished, finished piece, so it’s a nice and easy project that you can spend as little or as much time as you want exploring. I’ll be showing you how I draw in real time with no sped up footage so that you can easily follow along as we go.
While I’ll be demonstrating this class in Procreate, you can easily follow along with paper and pencil in your sketchbook, or whatever you feel most comfortable drawing with.
So if you’re ready to get started and have fun drawing plants, then I’ll see you in class.
Lessons
- Intro
- Studies
- Leaf Shapes
- Flower Shapes
- Vines & Stems
- Potted Plants
- Grass & Foliage
- Thank You
Meet Your Teacher
I'm Sarah, a freelance illustrator based in Scotland. I create playful, narrative based artwork celebrating nature, imagination, and emotion. I graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design with a BDes (honours) in Animation in 2016, and have been freelancing since 2019.
Empowering other creatives to develop their illustration skills is a big part of my work. As a Top Teacher on Skillshare, I’ve helped over 40,000 students level up their practice by sharing my own techniques and processes.
What Students Are Saying
“Fun class! The practice exercises were relaxing and I felt loose and creative while doing them. I enjoy Sarah's classes for her easy-does-it approach. You never feel pressure to do things a certain way but rather to express yourself using her exercises and ideas.” - Jessie S
“Great class for beginners. If you’re intermediate or even very comfortable with your current style - this class is great for expanding your style and trying something new. It’s a relaxing class. If you are not a beginner then this class is great to just relax and draw along.” - Kikas K
“This class was very fun as a different way to represent plants. Great to loosen the drawings and not be too worried about perfection, but more of experiment and having fun with what can be done and so many different ways to represent plants.” - Marisa G
I hope you enjoy the class! If you have any questions about it, feel free to send me a DM or email hello@sarahhollidayart.com.
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