Today I poked along the fence row while Mighty Huntress Dot looked for rabbits in our yard. We’ve got about a week’s worth of snow, but leaves are still visible on the ground at the fence.
I’ve always admired artists who can draw a single leaf so well that it looks like a portrait, so with that in mind I rummaged though the fallen leaves looking for a likely subject.
If felt good to be outside again, looking at what was presented to me by the world to draw. We don’t have a large yard, but I always seem to find something to draw here, and Dot always finds another trail to follow.
I’m going to draw this without any cast shadows on the background, like the leaf is adrift in the universe.
As I’m drawing the details, I’m looking for patterns I can easily see and transfer to my drawing. This leaf is highly detailed, and I’m not trying to draw all the details, but a high degree of them will help imply the nature of the leaf.
In a perfect world, I’d draw each detail so well that the underlying values would be just right too, but that’s never the case. After I draw the details, I always have to darken or lighten them so that larger shadows and highlights look right, too.
I have started to lay down the dark areas with hatching and lift out the light details with my erasers. It’s very difficult to get the overall dark areas dark enough for some reason. I keep going over them and over them again. I wonder if I’m just being timid, or if I’m not seeing them properly. Drawing from a color version of the photo might have something to do with it. Whatever the cause, it’s frustrating.
At this point, the leaf has no three-dimensional shape at all. It’s just a puddle of detail and is not looking very promising.
Drawing this dark on dark detail is challenging. It’s hard to see and hard to match my paper version to the iPad version I’m drawing from. The color photo I’m working from lets me see a lot of range of value, even in the dark areas. I’m adding 40% to 50% of the details now, but none of them are shaped exactly right or are precisely in the right location.
I’m happy to see the top part of this area start to have some dimension, since this part of the leaf is curved. The drawing is ‘signaling’ that the leaf is curved two ways. One way is by the light and dark values, and the second way is by the shape of the details over the curved part.
I was able to draw the bottom half of this area very quickly. The details aren’t very accurate again, however I’m more concerned with getting the underlying values right since this area ‘undulates’ sculpturally.
This part of the leaf has some reflected lighting, making the leaf glow from beneath, creating a patch of brighter orange-brown. The grayscale photo of this part of the leaf looks dead. The color version is lively. The problem is how to draw ‘glowing orange’ in grayscale! I think I captured enough of the liveliness in my drawing by concentrating on value.
I’m happy with this drawing, although there are hundreds of corrections I could have made to make it closer to reality. These days I’d rather draw something closely related to the truth instead of a painstaking copy of it.
Keep drawing everyone,
Carol
Its beautiful
Thank you Marilyn!
It is beautiful Carol! There is something about a drawing that is more poetic than a photograph… in drawing, your contemplative attention and love of life have transferred into the copy, giving a dead, dried leaf a whole new life as a work of art.
Thank you for describing the process of my heart and hands as only another artist could.