My Hosta leaves turned yellow, fell over, and did amazing textural things this autumn. My dog Dot and I were outside just as the sun was low and casting shadows over them too. We’d been quietly enjoying ourselves and taking photos in the corner of the yard where they grow, when suddenly four city trucks moved in on us. Our little town was picking up leaves, and they take that very seriously.
Two dump trucks, a back loader, and the vacuum truck with a leaf hose converged at our corner, all beeping, roaring, and moving forward and backward in a deafening Ode to Autumn with an accompanying dance on wheels. I looked at Dot, she looked at me, and we ran toward the front door of our home, where we collided with my husband who was coming outside to see what the heck was going on. But, hey, I a great reference shot. :)
First Crazy Mess Of Detail And Value
I talk about my reference photo at the bottom of this post, because things got a little complicated.
As always, I drew this on Arches hotpress watercolor paper with Grafwood graphite pencils.
I was happy to see that the first stage of this drawing looked better after I scanned it than before. I couldn’t see it objectively before the scan because my brain was in a detail overload haze.
A fern was casting a shadow over the top of the leaf, and I got that hatched during this round of drawing. I also got all the veins sorted out, which wasn’t easy since they disappear into all the amazing textures on the right side of the leaf.
Brain Dazed Detail Solution
As I settled back down to the drawing, I had a hard time focusing on one area, so I decided to divide the thing into halves along the edges.
This worked in a couple of ways, but first let me tell you how delighted I was to see that my veins were still attached to each other when I removed the first mask! Well, a couple of them shifted a bit, but not too bad over all!
Anyway, I made an ‘L’ shaped mask so that I could only see one quarter square of the leaf at a time. An unintended effect of the mask was to surround each quarter of the drawing in white, and that gave me an excellent comparison value for my grays.
Drawing From The Reference Photo On My iPad – Nearsighted Nirvana
I’ve been drawing entirely from my computer screen for the last three drawings I’ve shown you here. I can quickly enlarge, darken, and lighten an image, which is all very valuable to me.
I do adjust my photos for onscreen drawing by lowering their brightness by a few steps now. At first, I didn’t want to give up that brighter-than-life image that shot into my eyeballs from a non-adjusted photo, but then realized that I needed to tone down the white blare into something closer to my paper’s value when I saw that I was missing some detail in those super white areas. Live and learn.
Now I have the small 9.7” iPad, thanks to my generous husband (and a price drop), and I’m using it for this drawing. I can hold my drawing right next to it and draw at a 1:1 ratio. This set-up is perfect for me with my near-nearsightedness because I can draw with glasses on or off.
I’m also using the Copyit App because it’s simply the best reference photo drawing app available. I can set up a grid over my photo and focus on one area by darkening the rest of the grid, as you can see in this screenshot. This image shows the app with all the toolbars hidden.
The top right half of this leaf was so heavily detailed that I wanted to divide it into, um, whatever you want to call this next division, Copyit calls this next division ¼.
You’ll notice that I’m drawing from a grayscale image instead of color. This is unusual for me because I normally want to interpret grayscale myself, but I chose grayscale this time to help simplify this leaf, because this leaf needs all the simplification it can get!
The Beauty Of Grayscale
I chose graphite as my medium because I needed a form of expression that allowed me to work with shape, detail, light, and mood. Graphite is endlessly expressive in these ways.
Looking at the potential beauty of this leaf right now though, I’m intimidated. I know this could be a good drawing, and I don’t want to let it down. When I doubt myself, my imagination runs wild with how other artists might draw my reference photo in different mediums, like pen and ink, charcoal, and even watercolor, and all much better than me. I wish this part of my personality had never developed, but she’s part of me now, so I just give her a cookie and she quiets down.
The Heavy Lifting Is Done
At this stage in a drawing, when the details are placed and the general values are hatched-in, I always feel as if the framework has been built and now I can manipulate the drawing however I want.
I’m not going to stray too far from reality because this leaf is really beautiful, but there are far too many details to draw them all. With this solid form built though, it should be easy to choose which details to keep and which to leave out.
Also, the oblong ‘hole’ at the bottom of the leaf isn’t a hole at all. It’s a small leaf from another plant. However, I like it so much that I’m going to make it look more like a real hole.
What was I thinking!
This leaf has interesting textures. There are fibrous parts along the edges and fleshy parts in the middle, so I decided to experiment with texture by not blending any of my hatching during this stage.
If you think that made very little 
sense for me to do, you are right! All I got was this grainy looking texture in the smooth areas of the leaf where my brush blended hatching technique would’ve worked best.
Note to self: Don’t change horses in the middle of a river.
I think Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic has an explanation about why I suddenly tried something new. In my interpretation of her theory of how artists get ideas, including those that don’t work, we are open receivers. Our antennae are sensitive, we don’t filter well, and most of the time we don’t need or want to. Live and learn. Dammit. Live and learn.
Brushed Hatching And More Detail
Even though I did start this drawing with a skeletal traced line, every square inch of this leaf has detail placed by hand, sweat, and tears. I didn’t want to lose any of that work, so I had to brush all the gritty hatching one tiny section at a time. I added a new level of detail while I was at it, so the drawing kept moving along, but it was a sludge.
Here’s the same close-up section shown above after I brushed my hatching and worked on the detail a little more. Hatching without brushing gave the surface a jumpy/gritty look. After brushing, the surface looks calmer and flows together which suites the smooth quality of this part of the leaf.
I’m leaving my hatch marks around the edges of the leaf because they mimic the long fibrous texture there. They also work well with the smooth texture in the middle of the leaf.
Final Stage, Large and Small
Although I took it easy through the holidays, this leaf took a lot longer to draw than I thought it would. I took liberties in my interpretation of it, I simplified and eliminated what detail I could because there was just so much of it, but I was still adjusting the underlying structural shading in the last stages of the drawing. This was huge pain because I had to darken and lighten over large areas of detail.
For example, the point of the leaf needed to be darker to ‘push’ it farther back into the picture plane, but if I hatched over the entire area it might have blurred the small detail work. Luckily, because that area was originally hatched with hard 2h and H leads, I was able to darken it enough by hatching over the top with a 3H lead. There was some loss of detail, but it was acceptable.
I needed to lighten the top left of the leaf. This area had so much detail that I had to re-work it with my kneaded eraser and smaller eraser tools. This section was a major re-do and took a lot of time.
The leaf was challenging in three ways:
- It had an unusual form.
- It had a lot of highly shadowed texture detail on top of the form.
- There were cast shadows over the top of the texture and form.
But what really made it unique was that none of these things existed separately. Each one of these qualities interacted with the other so I could never change one without changing them all.
By the end, I was a little crazed and wild-eyed until I remembered that I had to let go of control. Yes, I know that sounds cliche, but the art studio must be where this cliche originated, so, sit down and pass the brandy.
Dances With Leaves
I worked through four ‘final’ versions of this leaf. Because of the crazy jigsaw of value and detail, I was only able to see where the drawing needed more attention after I’d worked on some other area. I captured the process with scans.
I let the drawing lead, and I followed as we waltzed, Tangoed, Hustled, and did the Pony.
As this drawing danced me around and around, I learned a lot about myself, so I guess I really did need to be swung around the dance floor a few times. The hardest thing to admit, to myself and to you, is that I never know how a drawing is going to turn out. I have no control over my drawings at all. I just start drawing and see what happens. Every drawing is an odyssey. And now that I think about it, I wouldn’t want it to be any other way.
Odyssey – a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune. merriam-webster.com
No Reference Photo
I only had to adjust my photo in Photoshop a little, and then rotate it in the frame to make a better composition., however this brings me to a point of clarification about my drawings. I draw from reference photos that I take myself, and sometimes I don’t alter the drawing much leaving some people wondering if the drawing is actually a photo.
I do this when the photo has captured the detail I want to draw, not because I’m trying to make my drawing look like a photo. My reference photos are part of my process. They’re how I gather ideas for my work. I draw because I must, and my drawings my interpretation of reality as it filters through my art making process.
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the use of reference photos online in general, and in particular I think showing my reference photos invites people to make a comparison of my drawings to them. For these reasons, I’ve decided to stop showing my reference photos.
Seeking The Treasure Within Through Contemplative Art
I’ve always worked other types of jobs to help support my art and my life with my husband, and we’ve always been very happy. I’m retired now and have more time to draw, but my drawing is still something I do out of love and need for the peace and balance it brings to my life, and not for money.
Bipolar II And Drawing
A few years ago, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II, and I think my decades long daily drawing practice had been very good for me. It gave my mind a piece of solid ground to rest in when my moods were in flux. I take medication now. I’m grateful for it and I need it. It keeps my moods steady and that allows me to be more creative than ever, but I still need drawing too. My daily drawing practice has become even larger in my life now, and it’s still my grounding touchstone.
My Art, Blog, And You
I hope my drawings inspire peace and tranquility in those who see them, and maybe writing about how I draw will help you find your own art odyssey.