Tombow Europe: Drawing a hibiscus flower: step-by-step instructions │Tombow

Painting and drawing is no longer just for children, but is also becoming increasingly popular with adults. Painting is a great way to relax and escape the stresses of everyday life. In this tutorial, you will learn how to draw a beautiful flower and how to blend correctly with coloured pencils.

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Pencils

You will need this material:

IROJITEN coloured pencils in the colours
Paper of your choice - With a rough surface, you can lay more layers of colour on top of each other and thus achieve more beautiful transitions.
Optional: MONO graph mechanical pencil for preliminary drawing

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Preliminary drawing

You can either draw your flower yourself or use our template:

Tip: Instead of using a pencil as usual, you can also use IROJITEN to hatch the back of your template printout. This gives you directly coloured lines and you don't have to worry about smudged graphite.

Sketchy flower with bud in dark red and green leaves.

Black and white contour drawing of a flower with bud and leaves on white paper, against a pink background.

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Excursus: Blending coloured pencils

First, apply a layer of colour to your paper. Build up several layers on one side of your colour layer. You will also need a little more pressure to do this.

Now repeat the same process with another colour. The two thin layers of colour are on top of each other and have therefore been blended.

Tip: Sometimes it is helpful to soften the transition with the lighter of the two colours by drawing over the transition a few times with your lighter coloured pencil.

Bright yellow splash of colour on light paper.

Colour gradient from bright yellow to olive green on light paper.

Leaves and stem

To make the leaf structure more interesting, you can lightly score the paper with a pointed object. The retractable tip of the MONO graph is ideal for this.

Now apply a thin layer of colour (P-4).

Now apply a light shade of green (LG-5) to the outer lines of the leaves and the branch using a little pressure. Blend the colours as explained above.

Now use the dark shade of green (D-17). Again, go along the outer lines and all the places where you want to create a shadow. The fact that we scored the paper slightly earlier means that fine white lines remain even though we are drawing over them with the coloured pencils.

Dark green coloured pencil shades leaf and stem on light drawing.

Blossoms

Start colouring the flowers with (P-5). Use more pressure on the outer flowers. You can colour the pistil with (P-4).

We want to make the flowers particularly colourful with a neon pink (F-2). Blend both colours.

Fine pencil drawing of a pale pink flower with a green stem and several detailed leaves.

Next, use a dark pink (EX-1). You will need this to create folds and lines in the flowers and to darken the inside of the petals.

Close-up of a pink flower with filigree colour gradients, while a red coloured pencil precisely emphasises the inner contour of the petals. Green leaves and a fine stem can be seen in the background.

You can intensify your shadows with a reddish brown (D-12).

To make your colour palette more exciting, for example, you can use a sky blue to create isolated effects on your flowers.

Finally, you will need a darker yellow colour (V-3) to shade the pistil. Also use this colour to paint small yellow circles around the upper part of the pistil. Use the previously used colour (D-12) to draw five larger circles at the top of the pistil. These details characterise the hibiscus flower. Done!

Fully coloured flower in strong red with yellow accents and green leaves.

Done!

Please let us know how helpful this article was for you to copy. Feel free to send us a message if you have any suggestions for improvement or other feedback for us. We read everything, we promise.

PS: We are of course also curious about your result. Feel free to show us your work on Instagram or Facebook and share it with the community.

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