Still in a winter hunger to gaze at flowers, I went to my over-wintering begonias for a subject this time.
I decided to experiment and combine brush blended smooth hatching with unbrushed regular hatching in this drawing to emphasize the textures I saw. I’ve never done that to this degree before, and I’m not delighted with the result. However, I’m showing this piece to you anyway because I learned something from it.
As usual, I’m using Mars Lumograph pencils on Arches Hotpress watercolor paper for this drawing. The Arches paper allows me to create deep black and beautiful texture, and the Lumograph pencils have excellent tonal value.
I was worried about how I was going to draw the texture of the big main leaf, which was velvety, but was happy to see that my sharp pointed HB and B pencil’s unbrushed hatching made a similar looking texture.
I hatched in the dark background to the left by brushing it between layers to create a very smooth texture. To do this, I worked in small patches with sharp pencil leads. I used a 6B lead for the first layer followed by brushing with a small stiff brush, then I covered that with hatching from a 4B lead, and brushed it again.
I revisited the leaf and darkened it after I’d added the background, because the dark background changed the overall tone of the drawing.
A 4H pencil is the hardest lead I have and some parts of the flower were lighter than the hatching it made, so I used a tiny stiff brush that had a little graphite in it to fill those parts. I brushed it back and forth just until I got a hint of value on the paper for those areas.
I drew the stamens by using a brush to apply the darkest value first, then I used an electric eraser to lift out the highlights. Finally, I touched up the highlights and defined them with a sharp 4H pencil point.
I used 2B and 4B leads to hatch in the leaves to the bottom right, I brush blended that hatching, and then used an eraser to remove the highlights. These leaves are made up of abstract shapes with no details and simple lighting, which is why I chose brush blended hatching for them.
I gave myself a lot of creative leeway with the old blossom to the right. It was a complicated mass of dark and light shapes, and there was really no need to draw it exactly right. I drew it with brush blended hatching too. Putting the background in around this area was particularly challenging because of all the little nooks and crannies.
I wish I could have drawn the stamens with more ‘punch.’ They are yellow in the color photo (below) and really catch the eye. My grayscale version looks washed out in comparison. I turned up the contrast on them, but they still can’t compete with the color version.
I finished drawing the big leaf behind the begonia in the upper right with B and HB pencils in unbrushed hatching. It needed to be a dark enough value so that the blossom would stand out against it and not compete with it in value.
I think the rougher texture of the top leaf clashes with the smoother brushed textures of the flower and lower leaves.
I think this drawing would have been best completely drawn in my smooth brushed hatching technique.
Although I might be a little hesitant about trying this combination of brushed and unbrushed hatching again, I still believe this texture mix could work in some drawings.
Keep drawing everyone,
Carol
