Pansies

2/11/20 pansy

Monday’s botanical drawing class lesson was a flower. I hardly need an excuse to buy colorful blossoms in the dead of winter! I happily dashed off to Swansons Nursery and picked up a small pot of pansies.

On the day before class, where I knew we would work only in graphite, I started drawing a pansy in full color so that I could practice the techniques I had learned the prior week in Crystal Shin’s workshop. Then in Kathleen McKeehen’s Gage class, I carefully measured a different blossom as accurately as possible and studied the form and details more closely. As much as I thought I was observing when I was using color, I realized I had missed a few things. Better informed the next day, I finished the color drawing, and now I think it is both more accurate as well as having color.

I’ve said this before, but when I’m paying attention to hues, I can lose sight of values, form and other important elements of rendering. It’s hard to use nothing but graphite to sketch flowers, but monochrome is still a very useful teacher.

2/10/20 pansy