{"id":11000,"date":"2023-02-06T15:02:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T15:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/?p=11000"},"modified":"2023-12-20T21:22:33","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T21:22:33","slug":"leaves-in-pencil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toadhollowstudio.com\/wp_blog\/2023\/02\/leaves-in-pencil\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaves In Graphite Pencil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Step<\/a>Since we\u2019re into winter and all of my beloved foliage is brown and wilted, I\u2019m digging into old photos to find greenery to draw. I found this composition, so I guess it pays to take photos when your subject is bountiful.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m drawing this on Arches hotpress watercolor paper, and I\u2019m using Mars Lumograph pencils. Arches hotpress holds deep black, you can create fine detail on it, and it has a lovely texture for graphite. The Lumograph pencils are always excellent quality.<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>As I always do, I start with a tracing that I transfer to my drawing paper. The tracing always includes many more lines than I need, or nearly every single edge or line I can see through the tracing paper. Once it\u2019s transferred to my drawing paper, I erase the lines I don\u2019t need and redraw just the lines of important details. Does this seem a bit complicated and silly to you? It does to me too, but it\u2019s part of my artistic process, so there you go.<\/p>\n

I started in the upper left-hand corner with the darkest area first so I\u2019d have something to compare the rest of my values to. I\u2019m working from a color photo in the Copyit<\/a> app on my iPad. Usually, I work from a color photo instead of grayscale because I prefer to interpret my own values. Many times, a color to grayscale conversion looks flat, and I can find more depth and dimension when I look at and draw from the color version.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m rusty. I\u2019ve sketched in the last few months but haven\u2019t made a full value drawing like this in a while. After a few hesitant starts, it comes back to me, but the thin stems seem wrong. How could these delicate things hold such large leaves! I check the photo and I have drawn them correctly. Nature is both amazing and beautiful.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m drawing the leaves by hatching around the veins. Then I\u2019m using the point of a rubber eraser to lift fuzzy white patch details from the leaf hatch. It leaves an indistinct white mark that mimics a bug bite, scar, or highlight. I press it into the hatch and lift it in a dabbing motion to lighten a patch. The edges of details are important for a realistic look, even the tiny ones. A beginner mistake is to draw the veins all hard edged, for example, and the leaf comes out looking too \u2018sharp\u2019 and \u2018veiny\u2019 looking. Veins have hard and soft edges too.<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>I\u2019ve searched through my photos and found two more that I want to draw! I\u2019ve never been this far ahead on drawing ideas, and it\u2019s a comfortable feeling. I\u2019m using an app called BeCasso<\/a> to help myself find potential drawings. It\u2019s an art\/photo app that has several excellent drawing filters. \u00a0I use it to evaluate how my photos might look as drawings, and it lets me see the potential in photos I might normally overlook.<\/p>\n

I can use visual placement to get the shapes of the leaves, and the shapes of the shadows and highlights within the leaves, in the right spots. However, since I\u2019m working from a color photo, the values are pure interpretation. I\u2019m constantly checking to see if my hatching is too dark or too light, but at some point, I have to trust myself. Trusting myself is something I have \u2018issues\u2019 with. I\u2019d much rather have these things spelled out for me. Yes, I\u2019m an insecure artist.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m leaving out some detail in this drawing. I\u2019ve always left out small detail because I\u2019d go crazy trying to include it all, but in this drawing I\u2019m consciously choosing larger details to exclude. Specifically, veins in leaves. I want to concentrate on the shape of the leaves and their lovely texture, so I\u2019m only including veins that I think are important.<\/p>\n

What that means is when I check my drawing against the photo, it doesn\u2019t match exactly. I have to judge for myself if a leaf is \u2018done\u2019 or not. And I doubt that I\u2019m seeing things correctly, I suspect my values are off, I think my shapes are out of place, I\u2019m convinced I should stop drawing because I\u2019m awful at it. This is always a good time to take a break.<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>\u00a0I often soften the look of the hatch by going over it with a harder lead. I sharpen the pencil to a fine point and then touch the missed parts of the paper within the hatch with the point. This creates a half step value and a smooth hatch that flows over the paper. This technique is the one I most use when rendering leaves.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to add a lot more detail to the main leaf since it\u2019s the center of attention, but I\u2019m not going to. I\u2019ve decided to add the major veins that have a mirror image on each side, and most of the smaller veins that have a leaf wrinkle by them. Hopefully, this will be enough to give the illusion of a fully veined leaf without mind-numbing detail, and the texture and shape of the leaf will shine through.<\/p>\n

There are some things that are impossible to draw exactly as they are, and these leaf veins are one of those things. At the size I draw, the veins are so tiny that my pencil tip, no matter how sharp, cannot be easily traced along the edge. I can only make them so thin. After I make the veins as thin as I possibly can, I darken them with a hard lead to make them recede into the leaf a little. That\u2019s as close as I can come to mimicking teeny tiny veins!<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a> The center part of the main leaf is like a blurry jigsaw puzzle with squares, triangles, trapezoids, and other more squirrelly shapes. It helps me lay out the \u2018pieces\u2019 correctly, if I think of it this way.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"FuzzyThe trouble with fuzzy edged shapes is that they can be hard to place exactly. And when you\u2019re dealing with a whole handful of them, they can become a wobbly mess.<\/p>\n

Once I did manage to wrangle the shapes into place, I was happily surprised when my two-dimensional puzzle blossomed into a three-dimensional leaf. This 2D to 3D \u2018pop\u2019 is one of the things I love about drawing.<\/p>\n

However, there are some very subtle value shifts in this part of the leaf too, and I doubt that I\u2019m drawing them correctly. I take many breaks and come back with fresh eyes trying to pin them down, but a correction in one area leads to another correction in another spot. On and on it goes. Time for a glass of wine.<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>I\u2019ve darkened the upper left side of the central leaf. I knew it was too light, but was refusing to admit it to myself because I didn\u2019t want to have to redo all that work! It was bothering me more and more as I worked on the other side, though. Turns out, it wasn\u2019t that hard to do. I was able to take a hard lead over it and darken everything by a half step or so. The darker value makes the highlights on that side look better and sets the stage for the wrinkled parts of the leaf too.<\/p>\n

Starting a new section on bright white paper is always slow-going and clumsy feeling. I never get it right the first time I lay down my hatches, and I go through several versions of \u2018better\u2019 until I reach \u2018close enough.\u2019 I love when the hatching flows together to finally create the texture of a leaf, though, and that makes all the work worth it.<\/p>\n

After I laid down a fairly large section of hatching on the right side of the leaf, I realized that my values in the middle section were too light also. At least my values are too light. It\u2019s far easier to darken a hatch with a hard lead than it is to try and lighten it with an eraser!<\/p>\n

Good lighting is so important! I draw facing a large picture window, which is usually fine because the light from the window is gentle. It\u2019s been snowing daily for the past week and a half, though, and the snow is making the light from that window bright white. So white that I think it\u2019s been making me see my values wrong! I closed the curtains today, and I was able to draw much more comfortably, and it was much easier to get my values right the first time around.<\/p>\n

I have struggled with sticking to a daily drawing practice for a while now, but I’ve decided to keep trying because I believe in my heart that drawing is an act of love, and when you love something you give it attention. Wherever you are in your drawing journey, I hope you’re making the time to draw regularly.<\/p>\n

Keep drawing everyone,
\nCarol<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since we\u2019re into winter and all of my beloved foliage is brown and wilted, I\u2019m digging into old photos to find greenery to draw. I found this composition, so I guess it pays to take photos when your subject is bountiful. I\u2019m drawing this on Arches hotpress watercolor paper, and I\u2019m using Mars Lumograph pencils. … Continue reading “Leaves In Graphite Pencil”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphite-pencil-drawing-lesson"],"yoast_head":"\nLeaves In Graphite Pencil - 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