Twinflower in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is double, and this is Twinflower (Linnaea borealis). Twinflower is named after Carolus Linneaus, the father of modern taxonomy. I've always found it kind of interesting that one (well, two, since they always come up in pairs) of the tiniest flowers out there is named after one of the biggest names in science history.

Today's doodle is the second version I did for the prompt. Got the idea last night and decided to use a piece of paper that I'd been experimenting with gesso textures on to do a quick watercolour pencil sketch of a twinflower plant. It was pretty loose and abstractish, really. Being the nerd biologist that I am, it didn't have enough plant ID features to make me happy, so this morning at work I did a quick graphite sketch that's more recognisably twinflower. Not perfect, by any means, but I'm happier.

The original version? Um... here:

Yeah. Not quite what the naturalist had in mind.

Ah well, it's all practice.

And excuse the scanner artifact. I'm not sure what's up with our machine here at work at the moment.