Ok, but Why Flowers?

I'll admit, I am rather terrible at drawing most things. Not for lack of trying - my hands just don't seem to want to execute what my brain envisions. I honestly just kind of stumbled upon the flower thing. I was new to blackout and trying lots of different methods and styles that I saw online. But only a couple were actually personal until about four months into it.

One of my sister's loves poppies and her birthday was coming up, so I decided to do a blackout poem using - you guessed it! - poppies. It was sort of terrible. (The drawing, that is. I usually am pretty happy with the poems and just try not to totally ruin it with whatever I draw.) But, the flowers felt just a bit more comfortable than anything else I'd tried up to that point, so I decided to give it a go.

One really kinda ugly leaf later, I hit gold - somewhat literally.

I discovered metallic Sharpies and drew a dead flower I had. (And yes, I know how that sounds, but I prefer my bouquets to be dead or dying, thank you! I can actually see three such arrangements from my current writing seat.) Regardless, I was really happy with both the poem and the drawing for maybe the first time. Still, I thought it was probably a fluke and decided to keep trying to draw various things. They all looked pretty bad.

More time went on, but eventually I circled back to flowers and metallics. I was not confident in my abilities at all, so I kept to dead flowers. My logic was that if something is already decaying or imperfect, nobody can say that your drawing was not quite right anyway. So my blacked out, moody poems now had death surrounding them. And I thought it was rather lovely. But slowly, I started to gain confidence in my little niche. I attempted a living flower, here or there, mostly based off of plants I had on hand or pictures I had taken. But the inspiration itself was still pretty disconnected from the content of the poetry.

Now, for reference, I am terrible with plants. I kill just about everything no matter what I do - it's a thing. Weirdly, though, I actually really love them, and I love the concept of using flowers to communicate like people commonly did waaaay back when. So I wanted to try something to make the drawings and the poems more cohesive. I got researching. After I settled on a poem, I would try to sort out the general vibe I was left with at the end of reading it. Then, with the trusty help of the internet, I started to look for flowers that had a similar connotation.

One of my first attempts had a lot of meaning and feeling for me. In Polynesian cultures, the fern is often a symbol of beginnings and creation and new life. (I'm Hawaiian, for a bit of context, in case you didn't know.) And I liked it a lot. So I started trying this out more and more. It's not always the case, but the majority of my pieces now have this creation process: Poem, meaning, and associated plant drawing. Now, I realize that's not something most people will get at a glance. The language of flowers varies across cultures and is largely lost on the general public these days. But I still think the feelings are pretty evident in a subconscious kind of way. And it's a bit of fun if you do know what different flowers mean. It's kinda like an Easter egg. (Any guesses about this one?)

My favorite website for finding flowers and their meanings is www.gardenerdy.com It's full of very helpful plant information. And while I kill just about every plant I touch, I still have fun watching them bloom under my pen! Of course, you can see all of my blackout poems (even the most atrocious attempts) on my Instagram, but you can also see how I make some of them by visiting my TikTok. (Click the icons at the bottom of the webpage to go directly there.) It's more fun to watch with music. And yes, I keep all my terrible videography up on there too. But it's a process, and I'm still learning and improving and trying new things. I've learned to be patient with my creativity, and who knows what's next!