Drawing Leaves

Throughout the fall, I've gone out to pick up leaves with the intention to paint them. For some reason, I just did not get it done! Instead as the leaves got dry and crinkled in my basement, I've been grabbing a few from time to time to draw them. It's been great practice, especially with the parts that fold back over onto themselves. This summer when I took the on-line drawing class, I really struggled with shapes that do this. I feel like my skills have improved, because it hasn't seemed so daunting.

This was the my first leaf of the season. I drew it with a water-soluble pencil and a water brush and tried to show some of the value differences.  The veins were drawn in pen. I am going to enjoy learning more about using this pencil with water.  

At some point, I need to push myself to add values in my drawings either with hatch marks or shading. I've mostly stay with line drawings, since I am getting more comfortable with that. Here is my leaf gallery. They presented a good opportunity for practicing. For the ones which were really folded over, I tried to think about the negative space. 

On the bottom page, I didn't capture the top part of the bottom-most leaf very well. I liked how it curled, so I went back and re-drew just that part. It's surprising how satisfying this was.