This tall grass is growing right outside my front door. (Yes, I know. I know. We don’t trim as much as we could.) Anyway, the grass’ stems are dark purple-ish at the bottom and some of the leaves are bright green at the top. The seed head is light green. It’s beautiful.
I composed this as I sketched, leaving out leaves that didn’t belong and rearranging others, and I like this composition. It has a few surprises that make me smile. I really loved all the old curling leaves at the bottom of the stems. They help root the whole thing to the ground.
I don’t think I captured the sharpness of the upper leaves. They sort of fade into the paper, even though I did sharpen their edges with the point of my pencil. They seemed crisper than that. Looking at it now, I feel as though I want to run a very sharp 2H pencil around those upper leaves again so there could be no question about how tight those leaves looked, but I won’t. I’ll save that fun for another day, and there’ll always be more untrimmed grass around here.
I’ve just finished uploading a Sketching Workshop to my online classroom and it’s open and ready for students! The workshop was inspired by the members of my drawing club who wanted to know more about sketching from life. Originally, I was just going to do a “talk” at the club about sketching, but the thing kept growing as I added more techniques and demonstrations until it was clear it needed to be a full-fledged class.
The topics are:
- How to Hold A Pencil (Four different sketching grips.)
- Introduction to Hatching and Expressive Line
- Hatching Types
- Simple Nature Hatches Part One
- Simple Nature Hatches Part Two
- Expressive Line
- Putting It All Together - Combining Line and Hatching
- Finding Subjects and Composing With a Viewfinder
There are quite a few videos in the class (six of them) and I think they help explain the topics in ways that normal text and illustration can’t. Seeing how I use a viewfinder to find a composition, for instance, is so much more instructive than just reading about it. I enjoyed making the videos, too. My husband was my camera man most of the time, but I was able to set up and shoot two of videos by myself. Now that I know how easy they are to make, I’ll be using videos much more in my future classes.
This class is free to members of the Drawing Club who’ve made 50 posts. If you don’t have time to join the club and make the posts, you can purchase entrance for $15. The class has no time limit, so you can work at your own pace.
Hope to be drawing with you soon!
Carol
I sketched this scene at Lake Michigan today. The foreground is tall grass that grows near the shore and the background is part of an exposed dune with trails. This section of the dune was surrounded by dense trees.
I’ve sketched tree foliage a lot, so I was pretty sure I could draw that and the texture of the dune too, but this grass was a little intimidating! I practiced a bit before I jumped in.
Funny, but the lines that make the grass most appealing and realistic are the shadows. I think those horizontal lines make a nice surprise for the eye in all the vertical grass, and they give a sense of the ground too.
We had a wonderful day, even though it was very crowded. Drawing in the midst of the crowd was a little hard at first and I struggled with my shyness. But drawing is so intensely satisfying that I was able to concentrate and enjoy the moment with pencil to paper, toes in sand, and husband at my side, asleep under the umbrella. :)
These Honeysuckle leaves growing around a stick had a rhythm that sung to me and, although the drawing is simple, I think I’ve captured the melody in this drawing. From the bottom up, the count goes: 1, 2 and 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, 8, and 9, 10.
I can hear this rhythm with my eyes, or see it with my ears, I’m not sure which. But I had to draw it because I saw / heard it so well. There’s more to the music, above and below, but this part was the clearest to me because of the spaces between the leaves, the leaves themselves, and the way the light was shining, which give a very slight accent to leaf number four.
Each leaf feels like a tap on a drum and is very roundly complete. Some of them meet in their dance, holding hands for a few beats, and each one looks choreographed into place. If I laid this drawing on the floor and and placed my feet on each leaf like a dance lesson from Arthur Murray, I’d do a crazy Cha-cha around the room, twisting and turning, clapping my hands over my head to the beat.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it!
After a huge scare involving the health of our oldest cat, a long sleepless night, and an amazing recovery, I spent some time sketching outside last evening to come back down to earth. We have a few Lombardy Poplars in our front yard. They were planted there by the previous owner and we’ve watched them reach their peak, die, and sprout up again from their roots. I was so tired I just plopped down and started drawing what was in front of me, and that happened to be the poplars.
After a while, I started to appreciate these tall silly looking trees. For one thing, their leaves seem to move all the time unless the air is completely still, and it wasn’t. Each branch grows out from the trunk and then immediately shoots upward making each tree a fluttery green column.
It was challenging finding a hatch that matched those constantly moving leaves! I settled on a varied and multi-directional hatch that was a little difficult to keep in character as I drew layer after layer to build the texture of the tree.
So, here it is. It’s a simple sketch, I know, but it made me happy to draw it and I needed to give myself up to the drawing process of observation and interpretation for a little while. I’ve been drawing simply a lot lately. Just sitting in nature and drawing what’s before me, enjoying the moment, and capturing a little part of it with my pencil. The wonderful members of the drawing club have been supporting me as I follow this path of simple sketching to see where it takes me, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for standing with me and witnessing my work.
This daisy was another Drawing Day sketch and I must admit that I chose this flower because it was nearest the edge of the path in our overgrown meadow, and I didn’t want to search any further for a subject. After I sat down with it, though, it grew on me. Its petals went every-which way, and they were fun to draw!
I drew the petals by paying as much attention to the spaces between them as to the petals themselves. I sketched them with a tight thin line, and then switched to a loose side of pencil hatch for the rest of the flower including the inner disc, stem, and leaves. I like the look of precise petals along side those loose dark notes.
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This is a charcoal drawing of my cat “Freddy” that I did for Drawing Day. I don’t usually draw with charcoal, but a club member’s great success with the stuff inspired me to dig out my charcoal supplies and give it a try again.
I love the way charcoal moves on the paper. It lays down quickly, smears easily, erases well, and these qualities allow me to quickly draw from life. In addition, a single stroke creates a deep black that doesn’t fill up the grain of the paper, and a touch from a tissue will evenly lighten the stroke and smudge it in an almost fluid way. Because it doesn’t fill the grain of the paper completely, you can add white chalk over it easily creating sharp lines and highlights.
On the other hand, charcoal is gritty to the touch and drags on the paper in a way that sends chills up my arms and down my spine! (I’ve heard many people complain about charcoal’s “scratchy” tactile problem.) So, I’m back to using my graphite pencils again after just one quick charcoal sketch. Trying other mediums always makes me appreciate my pencils, and I come running back home to them relieved and thankful. My pencils are extensions of my fingers and my art flows through them and onto the paper without hesitation.
June 7th is Drawing Day and I’m going to be drawing all day. Our drawing club is going to be drawing, too, and I’ve created some sketching demonstrations to get those pencils moving. :)
Check out the club if you’d like to see the demos, and join us if you want to add your Drawing Day artwork.
Hope to be drawing with you on June 7th!
Carol
No matter how you want to draw in the end, the beginning is always the same. The basics of drawing never change. You have to learn to see, and you have to learn how to use the tools to draw what you see.
Understand Line:
The edge of any subject can be seen as a line. It can be soft, hard, and / or varied and you can express these qualities with the lines you create.
Understand Value:
Value is created by light and our eyes see all form in terms of shadows and highlights. Areas of value have hard and soft edges which can be drawn with hatching and blending techniques.
Know How to Handle the Tools:
Develop the hand and eye coordination to handle the all the tools well enough to draw what you see. These include pencils and several kinds of erasers and blenders. Practice will strengthen your muscles and sharpen your coordination.
After you learn how to see and draw, you have a good firm base from which you can go anywhere. You can develop your drawing style, or you can explore other mediums. No matter where you want to go, taking the time to build a solid foundation of drawing basics will make you a better artist and wiser about how you create your art.
Discuss this post in our club forum.
I love the idea of a Drawing Day! A day where everyone sets aside a little time to make art. Art communities across the web are hosting drawing events that day and Carol’s Drawing Club is going to participate, too.
The lovely people at drawingday.org came up with this fun event so that “One day a year, the world stops to remember that joy we had when we first picked up a pencil and created our first piece of art” and you can read more about it there. Their motto for Drawing Day is “Drop everything and draw” and I intend to that. I hope you do to. We’ll be doing some special drawing challenges in the club that day, so stop by and join us if you need some inspiration.
Tags: drawing day
