I can tell you, drawing flowers at the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens is a very nice way to spend a lonely Valentines Day.

We were at the gardens for a floral inspired drawing project to get us to learn how to be more creative with our drawing techniques.

Before we entered the garden, we had to pick a colour palette that we thought suited the project. Like most projects, I chose to use a bright tropical palette as I thought it reflected the colours in the gardens the best. To help me, I had some colour charts from B & Q in order to create my colour palette and make it more concise.

We all entered the gardens with our big A2 folders which made for some very uncomfortable drawing, so in the end, I resulted to just taking some pictures instead. I find this is a lot easier for me to draw from, but I understand that you can make initial marks and drawings and then develop them later.

There was a variety of plants and flowers in the gardens including the smelliest flower in the world. A very weird fact I know, but the staff were very excited and proud of the flower as it only blooms every two years. Besides from that, there were so many interesting things to look at from the architecture of the glass house to the different coloured leaves which were sometimes more colourful than the flowers.

Once I got back to my flat, I started experimenting with different mediums such as gouache paints, watercolours, acrylics, fineliners, oil pastels and felt tips. I think my favourite thing I created were the paintings on the coloured papers. I really thought the leaves and flowers really pop on the different papers instead of always drawing on white paper.

I was especially attracted to the orchids in the glass house. They were so beautiful and the colours of them really reflected in my tropical colour palette.

These drawings are very basic in some ways and I always know that I can develop them a lot more, but I guess that is still to come. Fingers crossed!