Botanical Drawing I - Materials and Methods - Third Class

After kindly critiquing our homework, the teacher talked about and demonstrated the idea of picture plane, where there is an imaginary plane parallel to your face that you need to be aware of and work with when measuring your subject.  To assist learning this, a plexiglas sheet can be propped up in front of your subject, and, with one eye closed, you can take measurements with a ruler or divider.  I had a hard time doing this until I got home and set up a raised platform for the subject and a plexiglas rectangle in front of it.  You can barely see the plexiglas but the alligator clips are holding a sheet of it.  I stabilized the clips with erasing clay.  I set my cutting mat up on a box.  I found the grid on the mat helpful.  I drew two intersecting blue lines on my paper that corresponded to lines on the mat that bisected my arrangement of shapes.  I used a divider (looks like a compass) to take measurements -- you need to put the ruler or divider right up against the plexiglas.  I now imagine that the teacher won't like those blue lines.  Oh well.  We were to draw the shapes, overlapping, and use contour lines to shade them.  

The other exercise was to copy a drawing of a grid of woven ribbons, using different weight lines to create the illusion of dimension.  My drawing violates the 'light comes from the upper left' rule.  The drawing need to be touched up quite a bit, but I got the idea.  

OK, so I eventually settled down with a bourbon and water and played some more.  Gotta make the ribbons pop!  Still needs work but hey, overworking has its drawbacks too.  I'm gonna consider this one done.  I totally get the concept.