Showing posts with label color pencil drawing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label color pencil drawing. Show all posts

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Red Pinesap

Red Pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys), colored pencil, 14" h x 10"w.

Last year Herb and I took a day trip to Pandapas Pond near Blacksburg, a site well-known to botanists for its amazing fungi and other unusual species. Pandapas Pond is about a three to four hour drive one-way from our home, and I had seen Yellow Pinesap there on a previous excursion to nearby Mountain Lake Biological Station a few years back. This time I wanted to look for the red form of Pinesap. Although some botanists believe the yellow and red varieties are two distinct species because they flower at different times of the year, the species have not been reclassified so far, both are known as Monotropa Hypopitys. The Yellow Pinesap blooms in early August, whereas the red form blooms in early to mid September.

I had asked Gloria, a local lady whose blog Virginia Wildflowers I follow, to let me know when the Red Pinesap was flowering, and in early September--its usual blooming time--she confirmed that the spikes had emerged, so I could plan my outing. Gloria gave me some very helpful hints on the places where the plants could be found.

Pandapas Pond

We took along along a picnic to enjoy in this lovely setting, and after lunch, we set out to find the Red Pinesap. We took a trail that led up a hill behind the pond and found ourselves in a forest thick with Rhododendron maximum as the understory.

Rhododendron trail.

The moist shady areas under these Rhododendrons constitute an ideal environment for plants that lack chlorophyll, such as members of the Monotropa family, as well as fungi. On the trail near the pond I saw a beautiful clump of Indian Pipe, another member of the Monotropa family, and knew we were on the right track.

Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora).

As we continued up the hill, I looked closely at the forest floor--these diminutive plants blend so well with the duff that it's hard to pick them out from among the dried leaves. Eventually, the slanting sunlight helped to highlight several clumps of Red Pinesap off to the side.

Red Pinesap on the forest floor

Some of the clumps were huge! Getting closer to photograph them, I could see the delicate bells of nodding flowers were a soft coral outlined in creamy yellow, the stems a more vivid red. After the flowers have been fertilized they begin to turn upward until they become upright, then the seed drops through the capsule down to the ground. There were flowers here at all stages of development. It was a good thing few people were about--I must have looked an idiot lying down on the forest floor trying to get the best angles on these plants!

Clumps of Red Pinesap.

Close-up of fertilized flowers.

Lovely clump of Red Pinesap
Same clump from a different angle

I took photos with both my camera and phone, and it's interesting to note that the colors of the phone photos are more garish that those from the camera--the colors seem very artificial compared to my camera's which appear more natural to my eye. That is why I chose to use the camera photos as the basis for my painting.

We wandered along off trail, finding more and more clumps of Red Pinesap all over, some were incredibly lush! After taking lots of shots for my painting, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking back slowly towards the pond, enjoying a wealth of other plants and fungi, some of which you see here.

Emerging mushroom?

Destroying Angel (Amanita bigosporigea)

Coral mushroom
Yellow Waxy Cap mushroom (Gygrocybe flavecens)

I chose colored pencils as the best medium to illustrate the Red Pinesap because pencils afford the precision I needed to show all the intricacies of this tiny, delicate plant. I can work as slowly or quickly as I want with pencils, since I don't have to worry about drying time, and my illustration was completed over the course of a week. It will be offered for sale at the upcoming Art at the Mill this fall.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

The Holly and the Ivy

Holly and Ivy, in color pencil (in progress)

The other day that lovely old English carol 'The Holly and the Ivy' was running through my mind while I was taking my lunchtime walk. I found myself on the grounds of the Hilton Hotel walking by a bushy variety of holly I often see used in landscaping, which had abundant clusters of red berries (probably some variety of Chinese holly, Ilex cornuta). Underneath, the ground cover around the parking lot was English Ivy (Hedera helix)--an aggressive grower that can be a plague for gardeners who do not want it.

I took a few cuttings of each with the idea of doing a seasonal-themed botanic painting and brought my cuttings home. I trimmed and arranged the sprigs in a container in my studio and have been working on a color pencil drawing of them as time allows. I used the Faber Castell watercolor pencils  in conjunction with the regular Faber Castell oil-based pencils I normally use, and it's interesting to see how the watercolor pencils behave as opposed to tube watercolor pigments. The watercolor pencil colors blend after water is applied, but some of the shading and texture of the color as it was put down can stay behind, giving interesting variations.

This is as far as I have got with it. There's still quite a bit of work to do making everything darker, particularly the greens.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Drawing in Color Workshop

Gnarly carrot and color pencil drawing together.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a workshop at the US Botanic Garden with renowned botanical artist Wendy Hollender. She was a wonderful instructor--one of those rare teachers who can verbalize her thought process while doing a demonstration, who really gets across the principles and ideas behind her work as well as the techniques.

There were fourteen of us students, most of us experienced artist members of BASNCR (Botanical Art Society of the National Capital Region). The theme of the workshop was roots, inspired by a fascinating ongoing exhibit the USBG has on this subject. Wendy brought a fabulous assortment of root vegetables grown on her farm in upstate NY: carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, etc. all of which had a great deal of "character" as we artists like to say.

The first thing she asked was whether we knew what type of soil her farm has. As a gardener struggling to grow plants in Shenandoah Valley soils, I recognized the familiar twisting, contorted pattern of roots growing on very rocky soil right away and said so--my guess was correct.

I chose to draw this gnarly carrot for its intricate pattern of roots going off at all angles--it seemed to actually be a combination of five normal-size carrots with some tiny ones emerging here and there. My fellow students chose their vegetables, and we were instructed to start our life-size drawings with light graphite pencil, measuring and getting the proportions accurate.

Once we had drawn the basic outlines, Wendy showed us how she started toning the shapes with a dark sepia pencil to bring out the form, in effect creating a grissaille, and then adding a bit of color at the same time.

Wendy Hollender demonstrates technique.

Wendy's demo Day 1

She put down some color using watercolor pencils and applied a small amount of water with a "water brush" (a very clever brush with built-in water reservoir that saves one from having to carry a water container on site). The idea was to cover most of the grain of the paper, leaving only a bit a white for the highlights.

My electric pencil sharpener did not fit the Faber Castell watercolor pencils we were using, so I decided to try to stick to plain pencils for the most part.

Starting to add color to my early stage grissaille.

At the end of Day 1

Towards the end of the first day I had my drawing fairly filled in with color. I felt I was probably close to being finished. I voiced my fear of "going too far and ruining it," a feeling I think many of us share. This obviously struck a chord with others in the room.

Wendy's answer was, for me, the workshop's number one take-away. She said, "Most people take their drawing up to a point and then stop, thinking that's good enough. That's the point where you need to push yourself, to push your work to the limit. Keep pushing and pushing past the limit to see what happens."

That clicked with me--what were we all so afraid of? It's a drawing, after all, not a life and death struggle (though sometimes it may feel like that)--if it doesn't turn out well one can always start over. Wendy's insight is a life lesson one can apply to anything, not just art--all who succeed do so because they push themselves past the previous limits.

The next day started with renewed energy. It was time for me to work on getting the darks darker, for a full range of values on a scale of one to ten. Wendy had us do exercises on strips, toning small sections to create a 3-D impression of roundness. Some of the students had a difficult time understanding this, and she worked with them patiently, but insistently, until they got it right.

Wendy's sketches.

I tried out the watercolor pencils on the top stems of my carrot and found it an interesting way of covering the grain of the paper faster. I'll have to try more of this in the future once I get a sharpener that works with the thickness of these pencils. I used the Verithin black and dark brown pencils (quite hard compared to the Faber Castell), to darken and sharpen the edges, all to good effect. I used an ivory pencil to burnish in the colors.

By late afternoon my eyes weren't focusing and I was utterly exhausted--who'd imagine that drawing could be such hard work? I took a walk around the room to check our the other artists' works.

Workshop students' artwork

Wendy had demanded the best from each of us, and at the end of the day, when we all put up our drawings for display and a final critique, the transformation we had undergone was visible in each of the works.  I never knew I could achieve such results with color pencils! I wish all workshops could be like this one.