Art Nouveau Cherry Blossom Branch Coloring Page

A cherry trunk climbs the left edge of this sheet and throws one heavy limb out across the top, and the whole thing is smothered in blossom. Every flower opens flat toward you with five rounded petals and a dense ring of fine separate stamens at its middle, and the smallest buds are still closed tight against their twigs. A second bank of blossom runs right along the bottom of the page, packed so close that the flowers overlap one another. The bark is worked in long grain strokes that give the trunk its own texture. Cherry blossom is barely pink in life, which is good news here. A very light wash across the petals, left almost white toward the tips and deepened only where each petal meets the center, looks far more like the real tree than a saturated pink. Push your strongest color into the stamen rings instead, where a warm gold or a deep rose gives every flower a focal point. A gray brown trunk with a slightly darker tone pressed into the grain lines keeps the bark from flattening out.