Tag: Leaf

Sycamore Leaf

sycamore leafThe fog lifts only briefly at midday. Although the hills of the Peak District rise above it, just as forecast, we decide not to drive for 25 minutes through such poor visibility in order to enjoy a walk there.

sycamore leafLooking for something suitable to draw in a drift of autumn leaves on a lawn in foggy Ossett I realise that they are all sycamore leaves; three sycamore trees stand alongside the little track beside the garden.

Rather than stand outdoors drawing the soggy pile, I choose one dry leaf that has been caught in the branches of a Russian vine and settle down to draw it in comfort indoors.

sycamore leafWe didn’t get out to walk over a landscape of ridges and channels but I can explore a landscape in miniature by closely observing the undulating surface and the network of veins of the leaf.

sycamore leafI remember when I was at the Grammar School here in Ossett and we had a few art lessons from a student teacher who got us to draw a close-up of a leaf – just a small section, about the size of a postage stamp, not the outline. She then got us to take it a stage further and work up a design from it. I stuck pretty much to what I could see, just adding colour, which at school was powder paints, mixed in a plastic palette.

sycamore leafI remember getting totally absorbed by the repetitive but varied detail. Drawing it must have been a semi-hypnotic process, like getting lost in a landscape of rolling hills and rivers.

Lantern and Leaf

WE CALL at our niece Sarah’s new house in Wakefield and, while chatting over tea and homemade cupcakes, I draw this lantern and leaf.

Just as I’m uploading these sketches back in my studio I catch sight of a silhouette against the blue sky; a Buzzard soars across above me.

That’s the kind of thing that I was hoping that I’d see more of when I moved my computer to this end of the studio by the metre square Velux window in the mansard roof.

I notice that the cock Pheasant has now broken off his bowing and bullying display to a hen Pheasant who was sitting on the plank bench in the corner of my meadow area. He was strutting and bowing on the ground below the bench.

Every year I think that I might get around to doing a decent drawing of the Snowdrops, to start the season as I’d like to go on but, as in previous years, I’ve left it just that little bit too late and they’re already past their best. Those in the shade of the hedge look the freshest.

Put Your Feet Up & Draw

I’ve drawn my left hand so many times while in waiting rooms but drawing my feet is better left until I’m relaxing at home. As I said the other day, I’m enjoying these pen and ink drawings, although here I’m back to ArtPen rather than pen and Indian Ink.

I was taking a look at a Photoshop magazine in the supermarket. Most of the projects don’t appeal to me as they tend to focus on touching up portraits or adding surrealist flourishes to photographs but a step-by-step workshop on turning a photograph of plant pots on greenhouse staging into pen and wash appealed to my both in its subject and its treatment.

Put simply, I gathered as I scanned the pages with no intention of buying the magazine (this is a man thing according to a woman we were talking to the other day), you use a filter that selects edges only then tweak it a bit to give a pen and ink effect and you add a free watercolour layer by hand. It was remarkably effective in reproducing the free and easy charm of pen and wash.

Even taking a close look at the final drawing I think that I would have assumed it was hand drawn but it raises the question of why would you wish to deny yourself the pleasure of hand-drawing all those shapes.

Talking of Photoshop tutorials, the box that I drew around my drawing was prompted by Daniel Fieske’s Gnome tutorial that I followed through the other day. As I was trying to build up tone in my drawing in the weave of the jeans, the knitting of the socks and the out of focus background, it made sense to add an edge, rather than fade out in a vignette and have the tone fade out too.

I’m  very literal when it comes to drawing and you might say well there’s no box around subjects in real life but then there aren’t outlines, stipples and cross-hatchings either. As with Fieske’s Gnome I’m actually conjuring up a little world in any sketch even when I’m following what I can see with reasonable care and attention. The frame helps suggest that this should be taken as a view into a little world (in this case a rather unappealing corner of a world occupied by my feet).

I’m sure that I’ll get launched again on my book work soon and I wish that I could keep this kind of looseness and animation going in my illustrations, which will be in pen and ink. I seem to stiffen up my style and become rather earnest and uptight when I know that I’m working for publication.

New Leaf

Photograph of the back of one of the leaves seen through the microscope.

TURNING OVER a new leaf, as a change from the chairs, hands or architectural details that I normally draw when I’m in a waiting room, I pick up these dried leaves as we walk into Orchard Croft health centre in Horbury this morning.

It’s drawn with my new Art Pen and the Noodler’s brown ink flows just fine. Could this supplant my ArtPen filled with black as my favourite pen? It’s lovely to write with.

As the nib is a size up from what I’m used to, fine rather than extra-fine, the line tends to be bigger and bolder, which is no bad thing, I just need to approach drawing in a bolder and more confident way. No tentative whiffling movements! (whiffle meaning a slight movement, as if blown by a puff of air. In last week’s BBC TV bird spectacular EarthFlight, the word was used to describe the twist geese often give as they land, letting air out from under their wings by tipping over at an angle of 45 degrees).

I realised that in order to identify the species I was going to have to unfurl the dried up leaf. I had thought that it was the leaf of a species of Prunus, an ornamental cherry growing by the car park but there’s hardly anything in the way of teeth along the edge of the leaf, just a suggestion of it on the right margin of the larger apical leaf. There’s no suggestion that the smaller leave ever have a pointed tip, as cherry leaves do, although the damaged larger leaf might once have had a tip.

The buds in the axils of the leaves are reddish and pointed, resembling an apple pip. There are downy hairs on the back of the leaf, visible with a hand lens or through the microscope (top).

Despite all those white downy hairs this isn’t the leaves of Whitebeam; they aren’t broad enough. Some kind of willow perhaps, such as Goat Willow (but there are no auricles at the base of the leaves).

This is the problem with trying to identify a tree from the leaves only; you don’t have twigs, bark and fruits to give you extra clues. Still, more interesting than drawing the chairs in the waiting room again!