Everyone had already claimed their spots and were underway on their drawings by the time I arrived to today’s Urban Sketch outing. (I started my day downtown with my first Creative Mornings meet-up, which caused me to arrive over a half-hour late to Urban Sketch, but it was so worth it. You can view the recording of the event here. Look for ‘Tay & Val.’ It should be posted soon!)
We gathered at the lovely Woodland Park Rose Garden. The day was perfect. The early morning rain had stopped but clouds still hung dramatically in the air. The sunlight appeared only in a few brief intermittent moments, so everything was mostly lit in a soft, ambient gray light. The grass was trim, bright green, and damp. The roses were covered in glistening raindrops. It was idyllic really.
It didn’t take me long to find a spot. As soon as I arrived, I turned down one of the grassy lanes between beds of roses and was captivated by a gorgeous giant tree as soon as I saw it. I planted myself next to an elaborate spray of bright pink roses and quickly set to work.
In keeping with my need to do something totally different from my recent watercolor work, and as a continuation of my enjoyment of hatching random textured strokes yesterday evening, I decided to take a stylized approach to the lovely tree. One of the primary goals I have for myself is to learn to work more loosely, and to not be so tense and perfectionistic in my process. One of the things I really enjoy is hatching. So I decided to focus today on drawing in a loose manner while using more scribbling kinds of strokes.
I began by contouring the tree, first its trunk and then its outer canopy. Then I came back in and began the inner contours of its canopy. This I did lightly in pencil. I loved putting in these general contours. As I drew them in I thought of topographical maps. It very much felt to me as if I was mapping the tree. As I put in focused attention on the leafy branches of the tree, I watched a map of its topography unfolded on my page. It was a lovely feeling.
Next it was time to add color. Initially, I selected all the colors I thought I could possibly need for realistic color tones (some dark blues in the tree, some lavender in the roses) all those kinds of colors that are there that we usually don’t see. But as I started drawing in the canopy, I realized that kind of color-mixing wasn’t the primary focus of my piece, and I instead narrowed my selection down to just a few and began experimenting with strokes.
I enjoyed playing with the leafy textures. Different parts of the tree were revealing themselves in different ways. I used the contoured sections of canopy as an opportunity to play with a variety of texture, including some highly stylized spiraled lines there at the top. This gave me the idea to do the trunk and limbs in that same fashion.
As I drew in the maze of the trunk and larger limbs, I thought initially of ants and other insects and how they bore the most captivating patterns into wood. This led me to a contemplation of the beauty of woodgrain itself and how it moves and flows around knotholes and the like as it stretches its pattern through the wood.
As I worked, I realized that I really rather liked the unfinished portion of the tree. I liked having some white space up there as a counterpoint to the dense cluster of roses I knew I’d be drawing below. Of course, ideally, I’d especially love it if the white portion of the tree was in the left upper quadrant so that it created diagonally opposing visual interest in opposite corners of the page between it and the roses, but alas it was too late for that, so this is where I settled instead.
For the roses, I worked to carefully see the roses, each petal and how they formed into a flower, but I also worked to stay loose on the page: seeing carefully, but drawing gesturally. I wanted to get the feel of fully formed flowers and leaves but only intermittently and for it to mostly be made up of splashes of color and form. I think it turned out alright.
Lastly I came in and added all the supplemental details. The lawn, the mulch under the roses, the shrubs behind the tree, the bench sitting under its shade, and the blue-gray sky. In truth, the sky had dramatically gorgeous clouds mimicking the shape of my contoured tree canopy. They would have looked dynamite in here! But since I wanted the tree to be such a focal point I made it quite large to fill the page. So there wasn’t enough space around it to properly show the clouds. I knew that trying to include any of those cloud contours would only confuse things. So I oped for a flat wash instead. I used different strokes for the mulch, lawn, and shrubs. Then I used my blending stick to soften all of the secondary textures, which worked especially well on the shrubs. I loved how they receded after I blended them.
The final touch was to add some gray over the maze of the trunk, which both improved the coloring and also made the trunk look more textural. The maze acts as a foundation, but isn’t distracting with the gray laid over it; I really like how that turned out. I left the higher limbs lighter as an echo of the white portion directly across from it. I’m not sure if I like that result so much, but that was my reasoning behind it nonetheless. Finally, I highlighted sections of the outer canopy contours with darker lines, to great effect that I really love!
All along as I worked and made each of these creative decisions, I wondered what others would think. I wondered if people would see the big patch of white and think it was unfinished. Or if they’d think the overall drawing looked childish. But I realized rather quickly that I just didn’t care and that art can really and truly be anything you want it to be. Everything I did was with purpose and intent. I considered my strokes as I went, I varied them and tried different things. I savored the meditative process of contemplating canopy topographies, ants, woodgrains, and petals. I enjoyed the challenge of working fast and loose while still aiming to achieve some measure of realism underlying all of the high stylization.
Are there things I’d change? Sure! (I wish I’d added some varied tones into my grass instead of leaving it as a flat wash of one tone, for example). However, at my first meet-up (only 1 month ago) I was so overwhelmed by my subject and so insecure about sharing my drawing with others that I left that meet-up in tears. I felt so embarrassed and inadequate. Just one month later, I confidently chose a subject, made some stylistic choices to challenge myself and practice some varied techniques, and I was really proud of what I drew even if others might not ‘get it.’ But you know what? I got several kind compliments about the many strokes it took, the ambition of taking on the large tree in such detail, and the layout in general. That felt really good. So I guess my fear that my approach would be inconceivable to others was unfounded after all. :)