Last summer, this mix of plants caught my eye. It was midsummer, and the greenery was looking lush and plentiful. I recognize ferns and ground ivy, but the rest remain a mystery to me. I spent at least an hour framing it in different ways, and finally decided that fewer elements made the most appealing composition. There is also a piece of trash in the bottom right quarter! I’ll edit it out as I draw that section. :)
As always, I’m drawing this on Arches hot-press watercolor paper using Mars Lumograph pencils.
If you are not familiar with how I work, I trace the beginning line drawing. It saves a lot of time, and I end up re-drawing enough of it to make me feel as if I haven’t cheated too much.
First, I trace the photo from my computer screen onto tracing paper with a soft pencil to make dark lines. Then I put the line drawing on a USB-powered light board and tape the Arches watercolor paper over it. The light board is powerful enough to let me see the lines through the Arches paper. From there, I trace the outline drawing that I’ll use for my finished drawing.
After two transfers, the line drawing loses significant detail. However, it still gives me size, placement, and general shape, which are enough to help me create a good drawing.
The fern leaves dominate the upper-left quarter. My camera has barely captured their details, which are very soft and challenging to draw. I could have used a brush to apply graphite to the leaves, but I chose pencils for the control the sharp pencil tips provide.
Because the fern leaf detail was soft, value became very important. Unfortunately, the value range was limited as well, but I did the best I could by brightening some highlights and darkening some shadows.
Working from light to dark, I started shading in the upper-right quarter. I’ll be glad to be done drawing the light fern leaves in the upper half of the drawing. They are a bit like ghosts; they take up space yet are barely there, and they require a lot of concentration because they are so fragile. I’m using 2H and 4H pencils to draw them.
At last, there is a dark leaf to draw on the left-hand side of this quarter! I can finally breathe again as I get my H pencil into the dark notes of its shading.
You have to be organized when drawing a lot of leaves. If you’re not careful and true to size, you’ll be happily drawing along and suddenly hit a border with more leaves left to draw. This happens to me all the time if I don’t follow my outline drawing faithfully. It’s tempting to just leave out small details when there are so darned many of them. I know some people have a more easygoing approach than I do. However, I try to include all the details where they belong so that when my eyes scan the photo reference and my drawing, everything matches.
My camera didn’t capture much detail in some of these leaves. If I drew them as they appear in the photo reference, they’d just be gray blobs, so I’m using my imagination to add subtle contouring shadows and highlights to their surfaces. I’ve drawn so many leaves in my lifetime that natural-looking details are not hard to create. Balancing an entire composition, on the other hand, still requires a great deal of effort! So when I add contouring details to a leaf, I have to be careful not to do anything that upsets the balance of the drawing.
The detail is so dense in some parts of this photo that I allow myself to create the impression of detail. I do this by capturing the essence of the shadow pattern and staying true to those values, while giving myself a lot of flexibility with the edges. I decide which detail to include and which to leave out as I go, letting my intuition guide me.
I’m approaching the area where a piece of trash is in the undergrowth, which I don’t want to include in the drawing. My plan is to make the area heavily shadowed, then add a few stems to break it up.
Happily, the piece of trash wasn’t hard to disguise; it just took a little time to do so. I exaggerated the texture of a stick and added a few pieces of grass to the area, and now it blends into the rest of the drawing fairly well.
There is a cluster of ground ivy leaves in the bottom right corner that’s very complex. I’ve been working on the drawing for weeks, and I’m ready to finish it, so I’m trying to simplify that area to bring the drawing to a point I can call done.
It’s taken so long to finish this drawing because I’ve been facing several life challenges, and I’m getting older! I’ll turn seventy-two in August, and I haven’t been able to focus well during my morning drawing sessions, which I believe is due to my age. A few times, I’ve even fallen asleep holding a pencil while drawing a leaf! All the beautiful wild foliage around the house has been removed, and for the first time in years, I don’t have many fresh photos to choose from for my next drawing, leaving me feeling unmoored.
Drawing is so important to me that I need to do it every day, even if I have to rearrange my life to make time for it. So, I’ve shifted my drawing time to midday when I have more energy, and I’ll trust the Universe to send me scenes that I’d love to draw, which might not always be leaves. Until next time …
Happy drawing,
Carol