My artistic process is very important to me, and I feel complete when I can bring a drawing to life through it. I focus on plants because they’re right outside my door, and I love that they are so mundane and yet so magical. Sometimes, I can catch the most common plant doing something outrageously beautiful, and I feel charmed to have caught it at that moment. This drawing had me on edge, though. There are were so many leaves crammed into one space that it made my eyes swim!
A few blog posts ago, I decided to stop showing my reference photo because that invariably led to people comparing my drawing to the photo instead of considering it as just a reference. With my new style of drawing, though, I’ve stepped away from realism by a few degrees and think I can include the photo here. You can see the difference between the photo and the drawing clearly. The details in the large central leaves are overdrawn on purpose.
I’ve discovered that I like to establish some dark values before I jump into the main subject area, so I won’t under-draw mid and light values. I started in the top left-hand corner, and worked downward from there. Then I moved into the middle leaves quickly after that.
Even though I took the precaution of establishing some dark values first, I still under-drew the value of some of the leaves. That was irritating because I ended up re-drawing them.
That problem was caused by having too much white paper around the leaves. It threw off my visualization and comparison. After I’d laid down more leaves and background, the problem went away.
This composition probably looks like it was a complicated mess to draw, but I concentrated on one leaf at a time and that simplified it enough. As always, I did a lot of good old-fashioned comparison drawing, eyes moving back and forth from subject to drawing and simply drawing what I saw. Drawing is a very humble art in that way.
Side Leaves
The side leaves were small, fussy things, and not nearly as much fun to draw as the larger central leaves were. Furthermore, they were going to distract from the larger leaves no matter how I drew them, so I just drew them as they were.
Bottom Leaves
The small bottom leaves helped frame the large central leaves and gave the drawing depth. I under-drew their detail somewhat so they wouldn’t compete with the central leaves for attention.
Artistic Slump And Recovery
This drawing was coming along at a very fast pace until I staggered to a halt. I had felt some resistance to drawing and my drawing times were becoming shorter and shorter until I finally gave in to the feeling of inertia and took a two-week break.
During this hiatus, I worked on abstract drawings and I wrote long melancholy journal entries about how I probably should be making abstract instead of realistic art. Eventually a light broke through the clouds, my abstract art looked ‘interesting’ but not like something I would want to pursue daily, and I was ready to start making my usual art again.
When I make abstract art it feels like an inward meditation and I don’t feel as if it connects with the world in a strong way. Making realistic art feels like I’m facing outward and sharing myself with the world. This sense of connection is very important to my art making.
The Drawing Critique
I think this drawing has a lot of energy. I feel I chose the right paper and right technique, but the details are so overdrawn that it’s hard to see the underlying form of the composition. I think I could have held back on the details and concentrated more on form. Once again, live and learn.
Keep drawing everyone,
Carol