This was my second effort for the recent black and white challenge, a single white cosmos flower in white colored pencil on black paper. Simple and elegant, but simple is not always synonymous with easy! The foreshortening on the nearest petal was tricky at first, when I had tried this image before in regular graphite pencil in my sketchbook, but reversing the paper and pencil colors actually helped for this version, along with highlighting the white of the cosmos’ petals.

If I were to redo this in color, I would only be adding the shades of warm yellow for the center, and some green for the stem, as the petals rendered beautifully in just white on black. When I first finished this drawing, I wasn’t certain I had the look, but now over a week later I can say I accomplished it, and am pleased with it.

The original is available through my gallery at Daily PaintWorks. If you want a print, either smaller or larger than the original’s 12 x 9 inch size, those can be ordered through my Pixels subdomain. For apparel and accessories, check me out on RedBubble.

While I experimented with the bald eagle head for the third day of the challenge, I returned to the theme of white flowers for the remainder of the challenge where I actually drew something. More on that in the next post.