Botanical sketches

  “All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”
― John Ruskin The Elements of Drawing

   As I mentioned in the last post I had a longish, work filled weekend in the studio where I did a bit of experimenting. The results of one of my trials- a salt technique with watercolour, supplied me with a lovely leporello of colourful squares. I decided to use these squares to do a few botanical sketches of some of the reference photos I have taken over the past few years. If you missed my post on how I take and use reference photos, I am linking it here.

   I sketched out the basic lines in pencil first filling them in with detail as I used the fineliner to pick out the design. Half of the colours used where metallics with a mica base, while the others were 'normal', primarily mineral pigments. I used a few different black fineliners on all of the pages except the last which turned out to be the most beautiful but also the darkest. On that one I covered the barely visible black with white from the seldom used white gel pen which having been purchased several years ago lives on in peace in my drawing cabinet.

Magnolia in White

 










                                           


    I am not entirely satisfied with the tape I used to create the edge since it tore up some of the pages when removed. A problem that I think could be removed when scanning. If you have found a masking tape you love please do share. I think these little A6 format drawings would make lovely greeting cards or small prints. I would love to hear your opinion on them.

So which ones did you like? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this sketchbook you might also enjoy:
- Sketchbook of Graz
- Natural History sketchbook tour
- Urban Sketching leporello
- My first Urban sketching Sketchbook- Italy


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