Quercus alba update

In case you thought I'd abandoned my project, here is evidence that I am still working bit by bit on my oak leaves.  I've about finished the "form stage", getting all the basic shapes and colors down for the whole composition.  Do you notice that the leaf I'm working on, which is the leaf in the foreground, is a lighter green than the leaves behind it?  This is a little trick that will help the viewer establish the three dimentionality of this branch.  Mimicking the way our eyes see things, I'll make sure the things in the foreground will have a yellow cast, the mid-range objects will have a red cast, and the things in the background will have a blue cast.  In the finished piece, it won't be nearly this obvious, because many more layers of color and more detail will be added, so I though I'd point this out to you now while you can clearly see it.

By the way, the teeny blob of red paint on this leaf is not a mistake. . . it will be a ladybug!  More on that later.  Enjoy!

I'm back!

Oops!  I forgot to mention that we'd be going away for a beach holiday... and as it turned out, there was no Internet access where we were staying.  This was an absolutely wonderful thing for my family, to be unplugged and unscheduled for so long.  However I realize that my trusty blog followers must have wondered what happened to me!  I'm back now and raring to go...

Consider the two drawings I did this past week:

The first, a quick sketch at the beach, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not terribly gifted at depicting landscapes.  But you get the general gist of the environment, and you may be able to guess that it really was a lovely, uncrowded, sunny beach that stretched on forever and inspired us to do essentially nothing but worship the sun for a week.

The second took much longer, and I am more pleased with the result.  The light source was a bit ambiguous, so the shadows are not perfect, but other than that I like it.  Ah, the friendly starfish.  Creeping slowly along on its little nobby arms (or legs?) bothering no one, except the coral it eats.  I love the bumpy, ridged texture of its body, which serves to camouflage and protect.  The bumps and ridges create wonderful shadows and are actually easy to draw by stippling with a pen. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Andrew!

Andrew's favorite flower is the lily, and as this is his birthday, I thought I'd draw him one.  He loves tiger lilies... orange and loud and happy.  This is a pure white lily with larger, more voluptuous petals and leaves.  The lily plant family is primative, evolutionarily speaking.  It has simple leaves with parallel veining, all arranged opposite one another and the pairs are whorled around the stem.  if you look from the top down the stem, it looks like a spiral staircase, which is a nifty way for each leaf to get its own share of sunlight.

The flower of the lily is monoecious, meaning it has all of the sexual parts needed for pollination to occur.  Technically, it has three petals and three sepals that look alike and are arranged in a laterally symmetrical fashion, so it is called zygomorphic (bet you didn't know you were going to get a plant morphology lecture today!) The female part, the pistil, consists of a long style with a stigma at the end, covered with a sticky substance to catch the pollen.  It sits above the six stamen, the male parts.  On top of each stamen, a pod-shaped anther loaded with pollen is attached in the center, allowing it to rock in the breeze like a see-saw.  (Or spill indellible pollen onto your tablecloth if you forgot to remove it before you put the flowers in the vase!)  Lilies are fragrant, which is why I love to plant them along a walkway in our garden.  They are a welcome burst of lovliness in July, when other flowers start to fade away.  Enjoy, Andrew!  This bud's for you!!

Transparency

I want to say a little more about transparency.  Transparency versus Mud.  When you mix too many colors together, or when you mix colors that are not of the same 'temperature' (cool or warm), you get Mud.  It isn't a particular color and it isn't a particular thickness of paint.  But you know it when you see it.  The pigment just sits there dead as can be in a blob on your paper.  No depth, no brilliance, no light, no life.  If you are painting an object that isn't living, you may not mind this effect.  But to a botanical artist, this is a Bad Situation. 

What you want is Transparency.  A few thin washes of compatible colors, and voila!  It is like spontaneous generation right there on your paper.  The thing you are painting comes to life before your very eyes.  What happens is those thin transparent layers just lay on top of the paper, and mingle a little with the paper's 'tooth' (surface texture).  Light can still pass through the pigment.  To me it looks like the subtle texture of the paper actually becomes part of the painting, like the surface of a leaf.  It is almost creepy to see a lifelike leaf start to emerge from the paper.  I think of Michelangelo, who said his role as a sculptor is to release the sculpture from the block of stone it's trapped in.  So I'm uncovering a beautiful oak branch, trapped inside the white paper!  This is what happens to my mind as I sit for hours staring at my painting....

Green

I really do love the color green.  Depending on the shade, it can be refreshing, calming, healing, expansive . . .alive! In watercolor painting, the trick of mixing a good green is to use colors with the same 'temperature', meaning you use either all cool colors or all warm colors, not some of both.  If you mix a warm yellow with a cool blue, the outcome will be muddy.  And muddy color can be a disaster, because part of the magic of watercolor is the transparency, allowing the white of the paper to shine through.

These oak leaves are a very cool, bluish green.  So my leaf formula is veridian green (a dark, cool green) mixed with a tiny bit of indian red (which is more brown than red), and to add brightness, a bit of cool lemon yellow.  Later I'll paint shaddows and dark areas with a wash of permanent rose mixed with ultramarine blue.  Another cardinal rule of color mixing is not to use too many different colors.  You keep it as simple as you can to avoid the dreaded Mud Situation.  So I have to watch it . . . sometimes I get carried away!

Some artists get their desired colors by applying very thin washes of color straight from the tubes.  A blue wash over a yellow wash will look green, for example.  You have to be really patient and meticulous, keeping your brush clean and waiting until each layer dries before applying the next layer.  You also have to have an exceptional knowledge of color theory because you are mixing your colors essentially right on your painting -- risky business if you ask me!  As you can see from my palette, I mix my colors first on the paint tray, often testing them on spare strips of paper before I apply paint to the painting.  It gives me more of a sense that I'm in control of the situation.

I'm still working on the form of the leaves.  They don't yet look alive, but they do look like leaves!  so far I am pleased with how it is coming along...

Form

And now we arrive at the second stage: Form.  It is the easiest to describe but it takes the longest to do.  Basically, I paint the form of each leaf (and acorn) showing the the lights and darks, giving the subject three dimensions.  In botanical work, the light source is always from the upper left, as if the sun is shining on the subject over the artist's left shoulder.   To me, this stage is nerve-wracking.  I am constantly nervous that I'll mess up.  It isn't until I get the form right for every element of the painting that I will relax and enjoy the remaining three stages of work. 

You may think this leaf doesn't look very natural, and you are right.  The veins are too pronounced and the color is too monotone.  It looks like a plastic leaf, in my opinion.  But just you wait!  Once we work on the veins and the subtleties of shading, it will look like a real live oak leaf.  This is all I'm going to do on this leaf for now.  Time to bring the other leaves up to this stage...

My favorite oak tree quote

There are two ways of getting to the top of an oak tree . . .
one is to climb,
the other is to sit on an acorn
and wait.