This picture shows my tulip composition on my working table with a tulip leaf. My daughter was angry that I had cut it from the tulip: ‘When you are finished, you put it back in the vase’, she rightfully ordered me.

Also shown is a green Luminance coloured pencil. The drawing isn’t finished but let me talk you through the composition.

This composition invites the viewer to look in a diagonal line from the upper-left corner to down-right. That is quite simple and obvious.

However, it wouldn’t be pretty to have tulips lined up in a straight diagonal line. Not only would that be boring and unnatural, above all it wouldn’t be elegant. Because we appreciate elegance in floral drawings, I created a circular curve starting next to the centre (black dot) and following a shell-shape curve to the right-down section of the drawing.

The tulips represent a life cycle. The first tulip is an opening bulb that represents the start of life, the beginning or childhood. The second tulip is a teen: it is starting to bloom and is at the highest level in the drawing. The 3rd tulip symbolizes mid-life: it blooms and has a position between the highest and lowest point in the drawing. The last tulip (right-down) is withering. This tulip hangs a bit, gravity takes its toll and the leaf under shows it has lost its firmness or its tone. It is still pretty because old age is beautiful after a blooming life.

So, here you have a simple diagonal composition, a curve that organises the story-line that tells about the flowering phases of a tulip as well as any other being. It is about life as we experience it.

A composition is abstract and can therefore be grounded in an imaginary story. This story telling drawing isn’t a traced photo and no light-box or any other digital help is used. If you want your drawings to tell your story and show your creativity, do not use digital assistance unless you are a digital artist or it is absolutely necessary. Go and buy flowers, put them in front of you and look! What do you see? Which story is out there? With which feelings do the flowers resonate with you? Don’t go through your photo-album, go through your garden, flower-shop and faculties of thinking and imagination. Make sure that when you show your drawing or painting to your friends and customers that you can tell them a story. An imaginary story made up by you.

Paula Kuitenbrouwer

Click here for the full and final drawing