Using technology in traditional drawing

Most of my work is done using traditional art media: pencils, colored pencils, watercolors, acrylics, and gouache. However, I also like to use modern technology to help me do a better job with my traditional drawings and paintings. This post will explain a little bit about my strategy.


This is an *unfinished* pencil drawing of a silver maple leaf. I learned a while back to plot out my dark values first, no matter what media I am using. I don't trust myself to get beyond my initial love of color and on to value. It's a different process than traditional watercolorists use, but it's the only way I can work without producing something lacking a full value range. Incidentally, this photo is distorted- it was not taken directly over the drawing, but at an angle. That's ok for what I am doing with it, but if I were documenting a finished work, I would make sure the camera was level. You can tell it's off by the odd upward-looking angle of the leaf petiole. For what I am doing here, I'm also unconcerned about the light streak on the side.

I use a fairly soft pencil (2B or 4B) to plot in the dark values, and will have to go back later with a much harder pencil in the H range to smooth out the graininess. I have not yet done this in this drawing. It's still in a rough stage. I also have not yet begun to fill in the highlight areas you see here with a layer of 2H pencil.


When I get to this point in a drawing, I'll take a cell phone picture like the one here, and enlarge it on my screen. By doing this, I can find errant lines and inspect the margins of the drawing for stray marks. I'm finding this a lot easier than the traditional method of working with a magnifying glass. In this example, there are two stray lines that go over the midrib. I missed them when I looked at it with the magnifying glass, but caught it when I enlarged the photo on my cell phone screen. The drawing will look alarmingly grainy when enlarged this way, but I still find it useful. It reminds me that I have more work to do to smooth out those dark values.


Pencil drawings can be a slow process. I go back to these several times over the course of a couple of days to see if the picture is still working. I will also take several photos along the way to see if I can catch any more stray marks. In the case of this drawing, I know that the stray marks happened because I was working too late into the evening without my good lights turned on! My leaf was drying out, and I wasn't sure I could get another- but I am now on my third leaf specimen for this drawing.


Do you also use a cell phone camera to help you see areas to improve in your drawings?


It's the middle of summer here, and I am hearing the cicadas again. I don't know if they just started this week, or if I just became aware of them. There are years when I do a double take and smile when I hear them- but I don't know if they have been producing background music for weeks, or have just started. This is probably one of those years!

Snowy day, drawing time.

a messy desk

This week has been an adventure. My desk is full of projects, but I have to admit I am loving the mess. I'm done with the monarch caterpillar munching milkweed, and moving on to a line drawing of obtusa oak- I learned it as Quercus obtusa, but I believe it is now classified as Q. laurifolia.


And then I will move on to the silver maple keys.


It is so peaceful to draw at my table as the snow falls outside. I hope this day finds you happy and warm.

Herbarium sheet maintenance

In college as an undergrad I took two classes in the Forestry department to study Dendrology, or the study of woody plants. We prepared a collection of herbarium specimens for one of the classes. These were two of my favorite classes in my entire college career.

My herbarium collection has been in a couple of shirt boxes under the bed for many years. I realized last summer that I was going to lose this collection if I did not take care of it. I bought archival boxes to store the sheets. Amazingly, most of the plant material was still in decent condition.



There was an additional step to take that I thought could wait until winter. I found a great resource from the National Park Service on maintaining herbarium sheets here.



Like most people with a small collection, I do not have enough freezer space to put the boxes into storage for a week to kill any pests. But I do live in a cold climate during the winter, and we are in the middle of a real cold snap. So, I am putting the boxes into a garbage bag, and the garbage bag into a big storage tote, and it is going in my garage, where the temperature should be close to freezing (will verify with a thermometer!). First, though, I am letting the tote acclimate to the cold to try to cut down on any condensation forming and dripping onto the boxes.

I love looking back through these. How in the world did I misspell paniculata? I lost two points for that. :)


Some trees in this collection were young when we took the samples. A few years ago, I went back to one of the parks where we had collected them, and I didn't recognize any of the trees there. They had grown. A lot... as trees do. And I would not be surprised if some of these trees are long gone. I have a new appreciation for a collection like this, a window on a particular place at a particular time. Forests (even urban ones) are not stagnant. They are ever-changing, and the species makeup and the number of trees can be very different in a matter of decades.


Anyhow, this is a nice way to spend a very cold winter day. I will try to update with how this experiment goes.