The Making of State Flowers: Indiana

Indiana's state flower is extremely pretty, and one of my favorite flowers I've made to date in this series! The peony was adopted by the state to be Indiana's flower in 1957. This was a change from the previous flower, which used to be the zinnia.

Peonies typically come in various shades of pinks, reds, and whites. These flowers typically bloom at the end of May and early June. This ruffled flower can be seen in gardens throughout the state. When I started this illustration for the flower, I wanted at least three buds for the piece. The reason is to show the variety of colors that this flower can come in.

Additionally, I wanted to be able to show the different stages, to show how big these flowers can get. I ended up exaggerating the colors a little bit, mainly to make each one stand out. I chose a light pink, a red, and a pinkish-purplish color. I didn't want the purple one to stand out as much, due to it not being as much of a common peony color, so I made it in the bulb on the lower left

When I was adding the color to this piece, I decided to make the leaves and stems the same color, which added the challenge of making them differentiable when at a glance, this meant that I had to make the shadows a little more prominent and a tad darker than I normally would, especially if they were touching or had overlap. The next challenge was making sure the depth was readable within the flowers.

The Hardest one was this one here to the right. I had to make the lower shadows pretty dark to add contrast and not wash out the other shadows that were on the rest of the petals. I ended up making the line art for this flower pretty light, so that the individual petals could stand out even more, and the small, detailed lines would be pretty prominent.

The image to the left is what the final illustration resulted in! I think my favorite flower is the one on the left. I think it shows the viewer how big these flowers are and how intricate they are. I know I could have added a white peony to the mix, but I decided against it because there are so many other states that have white flowers of their own; I wanted the peonies to stand out against the crowd.