Lilac Leaves

Before I begin, I would like to address two items: blog maintenance and a personal note.

The images have stopped appearing in the blog sent to my mailbox, and I assume they are not appearing in your version either. I’m trying to find out why. I’ve toggled off an application option, which I suspect is causing the problem. If the images are back, yippee, I’m a genius! I’m not so bright if they are still missing from this post. If so, please be assured that I’ll continue to work on correcting the problem. Thanks for understanding.

I’m sorry this blog post took longer than usual to create. I had a crisis of spirit and downloaded a copyright-free photo to draw instead of using one of my own. That turned into a disaster. I could not conjure up the energy to work on it. I kept trying to, day after day, week after week, but I just couldn’t do it. 

I felt miserable until I received an inspiring email from Warren Woodzell (a gifted artist). Thank you once again, Warren. Your kind words about my artwork and tutorials reminded me of why I love to draw and what I love to draw. I set aside the low-energy drawing and chose to draw some lilac leaves from my photos instead. My energy returned immediately, and I felt happy again! 

Even though I’ve been creating art for many years, it remains a mystery to me in many ways. After taking this detour, though, I know how to stay on track: always follow the energy.

As usual, I’m drawing this on Arches hotpress watercolor paper with Mars Lumograph pencils. The Arches paper is smooth enough for fine detail yet textured enough to hold deep blacks, and the graphite in the Mars Lumograph pencils is always smooth and without hard bits, and the grades are true.

Those who know me know I trace the initial line drawing without guilt. However, the veins on the leaves are essential in this piece, but some were too delicate to trace, so I’m drawing them by eye. “Too delicate to trace” means I couldn’t draw around the veins with enough finesse to make them look natural. If I could have, I would have. It would have saved me tons of time.

The small buds and stem at the center of the leaves serve as the focal point of the drawing. They are slightly out of focus, so I captured all the details I could in the line drawing. With a bit of imagination, there is enough detail to draw them in focus.

I may have drawn too much detail in this line drawing. I had so much energy from switching to my own photo that I might have overdone it. If so, that will mean some erasing, slowing down the process.

Beginning a new drawing is always exciting and a little scary. It’s crucial to draw the initial values accurately because drawing is a balancing act. Values are relative; altering one is likely to affect them all, as each value informs you about the adjacent ones. That thought can easily freeze you in your tracks if you think about it too much. 

I added value to the stems and buds of the lilac and the surrounding leaves first. This means I’m beginning the drawing at the center of attention instead of sneaking up on it. It also means I’m working in an off-center part of the drawing instead of dividing it into quarters, which will be unusual to scan in steps but manageable. The details of the buds are so tiny that they are challenging to draw. I want to give credit where credit is due; my electric eraser, with its small pointed nib, has saved the day more than once while drawing these details. 

My hatching strokes are short, parallel, and overlap a bit. I can vary the hatch’s value with the pencil’s pressure. After a bit of practice, creating a smooth, one-value hatch is possible.

The leaves are beautiful as they arc through space and catch the light. Each is unique and has many subtle details that I must focus on to ensure I accurately model the value changes. The veins are so thin that I have to draw them slightly larger than they are. I believe that will look fine since the veins are quite prominent in the photo.

The leaf on the bottom right of this cluster gave me all sorts of trouble. I just couldn’t get the value pattern right. It was a complicated pattern, but I’ve drawn more complex patterns without so much trouble. I even tried wearing a non-patterned shirt so that the reflection on the iPad screen, where I had the reference photo, would be less busy and distracting. Nothing helped until I made the veins a little thinner. After that, the values came together. The veins seem to have a ‘magic’ width. If they are too large, they are distracting; if they are too thin, they disappear.

I’m using my book light to see the dark background details in this photo reference. My overhead light washes them out because I have the photo on my iPad, and the clip-on book light allows me to turn off the overhead light. Additionally, the drawing has many subtle values, so I’m using a value scale to see them accurately. The value scale saves me a lot of rework and frustration.

I used my value scale to draw a leaf with a dark background. I compared the value scale to the leaf repeatedly, and it matched, but the leaf I’d drawn looked too dark to my eye until I added the dark background. Suddenly, the leaf appeared to have the correct value! The dark background worked its magic, making the value just right. You might wonder why I don’t add the background first; perhaps I should. However, in small, tight areas like the one I was working in, I prefer to add a dark background last to avoid smudging the dark graphite onto the lighter areas.

Backgrounds often offer considerable flexibility. You can be somewhat relaxed with the details as long as the values remain correct. When creating a highly detailed piece, this approach allows you to take a breather and reduces the time spent on the drawing process. 

Now I’m in the weeds. Well, not really, but close. I’m sketching all the limbs and twigs behind the leaves in the left-hand corner. This isn’t enjoyable. It’s meticulous and frustrating. The only saving grace of this area is that I can edit it as I wish, and no one will notice if a few twigs are out of place. 

Now that I have started using my value scale, I’m very critical of my values and feel that my whole drawing is off by a few steps. I keep reminding myself that all is well and that it still looks okay, but I find myself struggling between instinctively drawing the leaves and using a tool that accurately pinpoints the values for me.

I’ve revisited the smaller border leaves on the left-hand side. I had drawn them too lightly, and they were competing for attention with the main leaves in the center of the composition. Darkening them slightly allows the central leaves to stand out more. I started drawing these leaves just as I began using the value scale and didn’t want to admit I’d missed their values. Hoping the leaves would work as they were, I kept on drawing. That was wishful thinking! 

I finished the small limbs and a bit of chain link fence in the upper left-hand corner, and I’m glad to be done with it! It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough to fool the eye, and that’s good enough for this part of the drawing. It was tedious work because some of the twigs were barely there, so I had to handle them gently.

I finished this section by adding a few leaves and a little more background at the center top of the drawing. So far, I like how this drawing looks and hope I continue to feel that way about it. Although the extremely dark bottom right-hand corner has the potential to ruin my happy mood, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

This piece is very value-dependent. I know that sounds ridiculous for a graphite pencil artist to say because all graphite drawings are value-dependent, but there is usually a bit of wiggle room. In this drawing, every time I adjust the value in one area, I must readjust the values in another location. It’s a bit maddening. 

The reason for my concern about value is that I want to ensure the center leaves of the composition are lighter than most of the surrounding leaves, so they will attract the eye first. As I work around them to draw the rest of the piece, I must keep that in mind. 

I never tire of how well graphite mimics texture. Even after all these years, it still feels like magic when I hatch a leaf and it looks like a leaf! I think that’s because when I draw, I deconstruct the photo reference in my mind. For example, I don’t draw ‘a leaf’; I draw a pattern of light and dark areas. I see the leaf forming on the paper only after drawing a general area of abstract shapes. 

A word about pencil points: the texture created with a sharp pencil differs significantly from that of a dull pencil! Keep your pencils sharp to achieve that yummy graphite texture that resembles a watercolor wash. If you don’t, you’ll end up with a grainy look. 

There’s nothing wrong with a grainy look if that’s what you want. The important thing is knowing how to control the texture you are creating.

Softer leads can create a grainy look, regardless of how sharp the point is. For instance, I’m working in a very dark, shadowy area using soft leads, and it’s challenging to make the hatching match the rest of the drawing, where I used harder leads. Even though my pencil points are sharp, the hatching appears somewhat grainy. I’m going over the grainy hatching with a harder lead to smooth it out because I want a consistent, smooth texture in this drawing. 

In this example, you can see grainy and smooth hatching. The grainy hatching (in the dark area) was done with a sharp B pencil, and the smoother hatching was done with a sharp H pencil. I didn’t go over the darker hatching with a harder pencil to smooth it.

I’m drawing in the dark right-hand lower corner, and it’s frustrating because all the details are tiny and hard to separate visually. I’m using my booklight again because it’s a dark area, which adds to the difficulty level.  That’s the thing about drawing big, beautiful leaves: if you want to be faithful to reality, you must draw the background clutter around them too, because nature isn’t tidy.

And this drawing is done! I like the drawing. The central leaves stand out enough, which was a goal, and the overall composition is good. The leaves have a sculptural look that is pleasant, and their values vary enough to be interesting. I enjoyed working with the value scale and will continue to use it. I’m pretty sure it will save time by helping me zero in on the correct values right away instead of guessing or sneaking up on them slowly.

Happy Drawing Everyone,
Carol