Paul Foxton over at Creative Triggers has an exercise this month, observed drawing from Nature. He calls it “Seeing More Deeply”. How true! I was talking to one of the Gardeners at Easton last week and although he is not an artist, he felt that drawing plants had made him understand more fully the structures, growing habits and characteristics of each individual.
More understanding equals more appreciation, as well as respect and downright awe, for the intricacies, cunning, inspired design, ingenious function and sheer beauty of natural forms. I have joined in with Paul’s workshops before and now, free from college and commercial work for a while, I thought I would have a month of, almost, daily drawing.
Quite a bit of my time is spent working on ideas for prints which involves simplification and design, so it’s nice just to draw what is in front of you without those extra decisions.
And of course, it is very good practise and feeds into the ever expanding knowledge bank of forms, ideas and skills. So here are the first 5
1st July : Bird cherry, a small group of leaves and an unripe cherry.
2nd July: A little hoverfly, obligingly very still on the tiny olive tree flowers. I think its a “marmalade” hoverfly
3rd July: Borage Flower…. beloved of bees..
5th July: Small field poppy pod with pollen beetle
6th July: The annoying but very dainty weed, cleavers. Galium aparine It has other wonderful names, goosegrass, stickyweed, robin-run-the-hedge, sticky willy and Velcro weed. There is also a tiny bug on one of the stems.
All are pencil in an 8 x 8inch sketchbook.
