A starting point

Here is the last piece of botanical art which I finshed and I am starting to feel confident about the approach and style that I am developing. As a relative beginner to botanical art I have found that the last year has been spent dabbling with this and that , but I feel as though I am finally finding my feet with this approach. I love to lay down the watercolours first and then add the detail and depth with polychromos coloured pencils. I am trying to achieve a look where the pencils work seemlessly with the watercolour so that it isn't obviously pencil and you aren't distracted by pencil marks, but rather see it as a complete piece of work.

I am starting a new botanical project this week and so it seemed the perfect time to get this started and see if it helps me to focus my attention and help me to track my thoughts and ideas as they develop. I have started with the idea of compleing a work with the subject of a cyclamen. They are just starting to flower and come into stores and gardens as the weather cools and it seemed like perfect timing. I also wanted to attempt to mix black and white graphite work with the watercolor and pencil approach to show more aspects of the plants and to highlight the gorgeous colours of the flowers without the distraction of the whoe plant beig in colour. they are so riotous and busy I thought that the flowers would be a little lost in there if I did the whole thing in colour. I will post stages as I complete them and want to use this as a reflective visual diary to better understand how I work and how I make articitc decisions and better understand my creative purpose.