November 8, 2006
just because you can draw every leaf doesn't mean you should...
Last week (11/2/06) I spent a peaceful, rainy afternoon sketching plants and flowers at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. I spent most of my time sitting in rooms with tropical plants, kept nice and toasty and pleasantly humid, listening to the rain on the millions of glass panes that make up the Conservatory walls and ceiling. It smelled of vanilla, plumeria, and wet leaves, and if I closed my eyes I could pretend I was in Tahiti, waiting out an afternoon tropical shower.
I've been reading a book Todd ordered called Fast Sketching Techniques, and so far the author has spent a lot of time talking about the difference between a SKETCH and a drawing. Sketching is something that really becomes important when trying to capture the likeness of something that is moving around a lot, like animals, or when just trying to get the general feel for the subject. I've realized that most of what I do when I'm out on these 'sketching' trips are actually drawings -- I'm sitting and taking the time to add in details, mostly because animals in tanks and enclosures don't really go very far, and airplanes and plants and fossils don't move at all! However, each of these 'drawings' take between 10-45 minutes, which means that the amount of different things I get to pay attention to is really limited. I also feel like sometimes I get too caught up in noodle-y details too soon, and I'm not really getting the whole feeling of the subject.
The drawing classes, workshops, and even modeling sessions I have gone to tend to start with a series of very short, loose sketches to get us 'warmed up'. I used to be in the habit of doing this on my own, but it has kind of gone by the wayside, and I think I'm starting to figure out that this practice is really important!
Here is a DRAWING I did at the Conservatory.
After doing this drawing, I forced myself to spend some time doing quick, gestural sketches of the plants around me. (Next time I will probably start out this way.) I decided this was necessary because one of the things I have trouble with is NOT drawing every leaf if I can see every leaf and have a (somewhat) unlimited amount of time! I started to feel like I was getting bogged down by detail, and wanted to stop feeling overwhelmed by plants with say, more than ten leaves. Like most of them...
So here's some of the quick sketches:
Some more I like, that I feel really get the overall gesture of the plant...
After a few hours alone the notes to myself in my sketchbook tend to get more and more silly... but don't those leaves look like tacos?
After about 8 of these 1-2 minute sketches, I was feeling kind of beat. I'm out of practice at this kind of vigorous recording, and to my credit I also didn't sleep much the night before. I was ready to sit back down and draw at a more steady, measured pace.
I like this one because, okay, I did draw almost every leaf (they're BIG though) but I feel like I loosened up a little and still managed to create a really nice representation without getting too agro about all the little nuances of light and shadow, veins in the leaves, etc. Although I'm also not using a really fine point pen, but a fairly thick pencil... I don't know... I'm still figuring all this out.