Orchidaceae – Temptation Rules OK

Was in M&S this afternoon and my eyeses must have looked like they were popping off their stalks and rivetted to the mass of tall, large orchid plants which they were selling at 50% of the RRP.  What a bargain.

Magnificent blooms, incredible leaves with loads of buds which show the potential to flower into wonderful specimens. It stands at least c. 2-3 feet high and hard work getting my selection home intact where it awaits my artistic attention and intentions.

So much for my recent decision to focus on a draconian cost-cutting exercise which would make dear Alistair Darling’s budgetting seem as lavish as Cleopatra’s hospitality.

I can, as always, justify the cost because  as Orchidaceae students well know, the flowers seemingly last for ever and “are well known for the many structural variations in their flowers. Some orchids have single flowers but most have a racemose inflorescence, sometimes with a large number of flowers” as with my latest acquisition and “like most monocot flowers has two whorls of sterile elements. The outer whorl has 3 sepals and the inner whorl has 3 petals. The sepals are usually very similar to the petals (and thus called tepals)” and so ends my botanical illustration note of Orchidaceae.

End of apple era?

The apple of my eye is on its way out – hardly surprising as I must have acquired it about 6-8 weeks ago – it’s beginning to feel a tad soft and wrinkly.    Over these weeks I’ve probably learned more about my self and personal development through my determination to grapple with drawing this apple in order to understood the principles of graphite drawing.

Although I still have a long way to go, I am not sorry to say that this apple’s lifetime is coming to an end.

That apple again

I’ll be ecstatic when this apple is done and dusted.  Feels like it’s gone on for an eternity.  Cant even lay claim to being that productive as I’ve only filled one and fraction pages of my sketchbook with this specimen. Thank goodness apples are so resilient; even the strongest of lilies would have collapsed in a heap of debris long ago.  As it’s taking so long to make any meaningful progress I’m beginning to think that graphite isnt the best medium for my limited availability and impatient temperament.  Reckon I’ll give it by best and darndest for say another week or so by which I mean at least a good 25 minutes a day and focus on finishing it off so that I then feel free start on a new exercise.

Cant wait

Discreditted internal critic

Collected my coursework Thursday and very pleasantly surprised to see that my internal critic had over-reacted to the pressures of submitting three pieces of work to submission deadlines. Although my work hardly compares to the outstanding work by the likes of Valerie Oxley or Rosie Martin and Meriel Thurstan of  the Eden Project fame, the stuff I did is far better than my recollections so I’m well pleased.  Maybe I might upload them when I’ve got a mo.  :)

The apple of my eye – tonal values

Distrated from finishing  this post started early last week and just reminded of it when I went to check my dashboard for something else.  So remiss of me :P

Although drawing this apple is a right royal pain – what a great attitude – I am gradually beginning to appreciate how it is helping me to develop my awareness of tonal values.  I have found it particularly difficult to use effective shading to capture  the different tones of this apple.  As soon as I realised that the purpose of my shading was to represent as accurately as possible the different shades and shadings for this apple of my eye – and gosh isnt that a difficult job.

Drawing the tiniest of tiny concentric overlapping circles however is just plain tedious.  And thank goodness for putty rubbers which I seem to be eating up at a rate of knots.  On the plus side, however, things seem to have improved since I’ve been working with the 2B graphite lead over HB so I guess there’s been some progress.

My worst critic

I am really glad to have found Debbie Adams website  Adamsart for stating the need to be less critical about my artwork because other people will think it’s wonderful.  Debbie’s observation is just so true.  Although my teachers have quite certainly commented on how to improve my technique and style,  the plain truth is that the non-artists to whom I have shown my work think it’s beautiful and I’m very talented.  As I have now been trained to see what needs to be done and my short-comings I’d probably say that they’re still being very generous.

Thanks to my readers

Hi there, I’d just like to thank everyone for reading my blog. It attracts a good quality following with circa 150 readers a month. I am proud of this because botanical illustration is a specalist area and I do not promote my blog.

Apart from Akismet-zapped spam, I’ve had great comments and I am profoundly grateful for the encouragement.  I have been inspired to increase my efforts, frequency and standards of my work on botanical illustration.  Some of your comments have also inspired me to think in different directions which I have explored by writing more blog posts – so thank you to those who have helped me in this way.

I really love receiving comments in a family friendly way on whatever you feel is relevant or helpful whether to me or any other readers and I do everything possible to encourage relevant links in comments. Please also feel free to point to a link on your own or someone else’s site that is relevant to the topic  because it will add to the conversation and improve this blog for everyone.

As Akismet is installed, neither I nor anyone else will waste time on spam which is deleted immediately.

My inspiration for this post is problogger.net’s post on encouraging comments.

A real sketchbook

And for anyone who wants to see what a real sketchbook looks like, I’m recommending this draw-dropping example Vicky’s awesome sketches. Each one of those specimens would take me hours of work and that’s without getting in to colour matching, mixing and the like.

Mona Lisa’s lips

I felt really encouraged by a comment which I found on Twitter which said that Leonardo took 12 years just to paint Mona Lisa’s lips; really very humbling with me thinking that I’ll hit perfection with drawing this red apple in just 3 weeks – so it’s back to the drawing board; ho hum.  :D

Observations on graphite drawing skills

Apple seems to be going well in that it looks like an apple and appears to be quite similar to the specimen I’ve been using since 20th October.  That’s nearly 3 weeks ago since I started work on it and the process has proven to be a valuable learning experience.

Somehow or another, the surface where I’ve drawn this specimen has been disturbed which has made getting the right tonality in some areas rather more difficult than I would normally have anticipated.

One of the most important key skills which I need to develop for this medium is the ability to draw tiny little concentric circles on top of each other to create an even appearance.

Thankfully I seem to have lost my heavy handed style which seems to have become a light delicate touch gently glossing the page surface and so vital for graphite drawing; the last thing I want to achieve is a heavy shiny-ness due to being heavy handed with the graphite.

Producing a good image is as much down to knowing the fine art of using a putty rubber effectively; I’ve used and recommend the Windsor & Newton putty rubber – it may be a tad more expensive than some of the others but it’s a whole lot better than the light blue Daler one which is a load of rubbish  because whenever I’ve used (misused???) it, I’ve ended up with a not so nice  blue stain on my really expensive drawing/painting paper & wasted a whole load of the valuable time I’ve invested on setting up the line drawing.

Cant say it’s a brilliant piece of work or that it’s really finished, but as it’s recognisable I think I’ve produced something which is at least passable.

Without doubt, patience – lots of it and careful observation – even more are essential producing an accurate and realistic piece of work.  As the specimen still looks like it’s still going strong I’m in two minds about whether to continue with this or go on to some colour matching or working on neutral tint.

However it’s all a tad academic right now because I think there’s more I could do to improve this piece of work and I dont feel inclined to start something new when I havent finished this specimen yet.