Botanical Drawing I Materials and Methods - Second class

For the second class we played with perspective and depth of field.  We learned two point perspective which we will not be using in botanical drawing because plants aren't boxy.  But it takes little time to have the "A-ha" and it is essential for drawing many things (other than plants.) 

Then we were each given a a black and white copy of a photograph of leaves and told to draw the leaves light to dark to indicate depth and to keep the drawing from looking totally flat.  I did this in class.  Lots of leaves, lots of overlap.  Yikes. 

For our homework we were to obtain some flat leaves, create a composition with the leaves overlapping, and then draw them lighter and darker.  I bought turnip leaves.  I photographed them and printed the image.  We were not to use any shading, only lines.  This forces a focus on line intensity.  I had fun with this exercise.  I did have to darken or lighten some areas--overdrawing or erasing.  I did not have a clear plan when I started this so it took a while to evolve.  I enjoyed the process and learned a lot by doing this.  And I haven't even started googling what-to-do-with-turnip-leaves…