How to Draw Modern Florals Review

One of my goals for this year was to start drawing and painting more flowers (and other flora) in my art journals. Other than a giant drawing of a rose I did in art school (that took me over 26 hours to draw), I never really felt great about my flower drawing skills. But when I saw Alli Koch’s Instagram, and learned she had a book about it, I knew I had to buy (and practice!) How To Draw Modern Florals.

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The book itself is a statement is simple beauty, which is a lot like how Alli teaches drawing flowers. Her simple line drawings bloom into gorgeous, realistic flowers. And she breaks her technique down in a way that makes it so easy — even for someone like me who was lacking the flower-drawing skills.

Here is a quick video of some of the drawings I made from the book, as well as some of the pages of the book itself:

The book starts with an introduction to the author and artist, and then gives you a list of supplies you might need. But the truth is, and Alli says so too, you could start with any piece of paper, a pencil and a pen of any kind. But if you want to upgrade, she does suggest a lead mechanical pencil, TomBow MONO sand eraser (because it erases both pencil and pen!), Micron Pens, etc. There is space in the book to practice each type of flower she teaches you to draw, but I used a simple and inexpensive sketchbook just for my floral drawing practice.

She then covers some basics for flower drawing, and it really helps you learn how to see the flowers in front of you in order to draw them. She breaks them down into shapes that anyone who knows who to write can draw. It gives you such confidence in yourself you’ll want to get started right away!

The first flower she teaches you how to draw in this book is a Daisy. I did practice this one in the book at first, but found it kind of hard because I had to flip the pages back and forth to see what I was supposed to be drawing, and then draw it.

I never used a pencil when making these floral drawings, partly because I believe in happy accidents, but also because I wasn’t trying to make an exact copy of Alli’s drawings. I still wanted my own hand in each piece. And the truth is, pencil or not, I think your own hand/style will come through as you learn how to draw flowers from this How to Draw Modern Florals book.

For instance, you can see in the example below that I drew the magnolia twice from the same tutorial. You can see how different they look from each other — partly because of practice and growth, but also because I’m just using a pen, trying not to overthink it, and making (happy) mistakes. So not only am I not copying Alli’s drawings exactly, I’m not even able to reproduce my own original drawing exactly how it was. Just like the flowers themselves, no two drawings are exactly alike!

Besides flowers, you’ll also learn to draw some cacti, succulents, wreaths and more. And even though I’ve shared a lot of my own pieces from the book, I won’t share everything because I want you to be delightfully surprised but what else you’ll learn from How to Draw Modern Florals.

Tools I used to Review How to Draw Modern Florals:

Overall, I not only thoroughly enjoyed How to Draw Modern Florals, with its beautiful imagery and delightful instructions, but I feel like I’ve grown as an artist because of it, too. So I definitely recommend it and give it 5 out of 5 stars.