By “special”, I mean the flowers have special meanings for me (or the season when I made them).
In this post, I’ll talk about the flowers that I drew for: (1) Mother’s day; (2) the end of the semester (when I made the art challenge, our semesters end on May). (Link to my Instagram to see my flower art challenge).
Let me just plug (again) the pixel art app I’m using. They have the app available both on PC and on phone, and it’s made by an indie developer. So if you’re interested, please try the app and support the developer! They have a layer function as well as an animation function (for free!). (No I’m not paid to advertise the app, I just love the app)
Steam: Pixel Studio – pixel art editor
Mac App Store: Pixel Studio for pixel art
Google Play: Pixel Studio: pixel art editor
App Store: Pixel Studio for pixel art
So yeah, let’s start with the flowers I drew for Mother’s day: Hyacinth and Orchid
Flower: Hyacinth
Posted: May 10
Supposed Post Date: May 10
Why I Chose This: My mom’s name is an anagram of the name of the flower :))
Experience: Honestly, while drawing the flower on pencil, it was fun to draw. This couldn’t be translated well in a 16×16 art though. All I could do was draw sticks of colors. Still, I do think I did fine (compared to my other arts, lol)
Trivia:
> Hyacinth derives from an ancient Greek legend/god, namely Hyakinthos [1].
> There are three main varieties of hyacinths: Single, Double and Multiflora [1].
> During the second half of the 18th Century, breeding Hyacinths became the fashion in Germany. Even King Wilhelm III personally took care of these flowers in his palace gardens [1].
Flower: Orchid
Posted: May 10
Supposed Post Date: May 10
Why I Chose This: My mom’s favorite flower
Experience: I love the experiment I did with this. It didn’t turn out pretty in HD, but it did turn out pretty when it’s blurry. This is probably something I should explore more when doing pixel art.
Trivia:
> Orchids are one of the oldest family of flowering plants. Orchid varieties have been found all over the world. This leads experts to believe they have been around since before the continents separated [2]!
> The smallest orchid is the size of a dime. The largest weighs several hundred pounds [2].
> Orchid flowers are symmetrical. [2].
Now. let’s move on to the two flowers I chose for the end of the semester: Clover and Sunflower
Flower: Clover
Posted: May 22
Supposed Post Date: May 22
Why I Chose This: Since May 23 is the last day of classes/finals, May 22 is the last day to cram everything (lol). So yeah, I drew a 4-leaf clover to wish everyone luck on cramming everything.
Experience: The 4-leaf clover was easy to draw since it’s a multiple of 4 (of which pixel art is a multiple of). As for the pencil art, I don’t think I captured the clover very well. The shading got too mixed up, sadly.
Trivia:
> The leaves on four leaf clovers are said to stand for faith, love, hope and luck [3].
> Four leaf clovers are extremely rare – for every one, there are approximately 10,000 three leaf clovers [3]!
> Although there are no clover plants that naturally produce four leaves, when four leaf clovers do grow, they are a result of a mutation in the white clover plant [3].
Flower: Sunflower
Posted: May 23
Supposed Post Date: May 23
Why I Chose This: Sunflower is the symbol of graduation in my university and May 23 was the last day of classes/final exams for that academic year. Padayon mga isko at iska!
This flower is actually why I specifically chose these series of flowers to feature in this week’s post (after N weeks of not posting). I’m nearing my last semester (last push!), and I hope I finally do get to see the sunflowers next year during graduation.
Experience: In this one, I love the simplicity of a sunflower and how it can be drawn so easily along with its leaves. I also like how I managed to write “padayon” (move forward) in Baybayin in the pixel art. I hate my pencil art though.
Trivia:
> This is a well-known trivia, but here we go: Each sunflower is actually thousands of teeny flowers [4].
> Sunflowers can even be different colors. Yellow is the most common but there are also red, orange and purple sunflowers [4]. (Yeah, I’m very very surprised as well)
> Sunflowers only grow on their season (around Summer/Autumn (July to October)), but my University genetically modified our sunflowers to bloom on graduation season (before it was April, then June (after an academic calendar shift), then now August (after pandemic). So yeah, we’ll probably turn back to using normal sunflowers soon lmao).
References:
[1] https://www.bostonbulbswholesale.co.uk/blog/news/14-facts-about-hyacinths
[2] https://www.englishgardens.com/fun-facts-about-orchids/
[3] https://www.1800flowers.com/blog/floral-occasions-holidays/fun-four-leaf-clover-facts/
[4] http://www.royaltonlibrary.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Fun-Facts-About-Sunflowers.pdf
Wings-p O_O 