Transcripts
1. Intro/Trailer: Hi, I'm ESA down. I'm an artist and illustrator and author with my company property and Draco. And in this class we are going to be bringing plurals to life. To do this is actually quite simple. What you need to do is bring some movement and depth to your fluorophores, making them look alive and a little bit more realistic, giving them a bit of dance and whimsy. And the best way to do that, to add some curves and folds to your leaves and petals. In this class, I'll be taking you step by step through the different tips and tricks that I've learned over the years to bring this beautiful movement and depth to your floor or else, I look forward to having you in class and I'll see you there.
2. Materials: All you're going to be meeting is some paper and pencil and eraser. That is all we are going to be doing today because today's class is about how we look at something and apply it to the page and less about other things. If you want to create more colorful things for the class project, then by all means, have some colored pencils or paint, and you can certainly create something colorful For the class project. For the class itself, all you'll need is a paper, pencil and an eraser.
3. Flowers: Draw What You See: Okay, so first let's talk about how we're going to be drawing the flour. What we're talking about when we're looking at taking something that's three-dimensional, like a flower that you can actually hold in your hands and turn and look at or something that is a photograph of a three-dimensional object that's very crisp and clear and we can clearly see in the photograph what we would see in real life. We want to make sure that we are drawing onto the page as we take this three-dimensional object and turn it into a two-dimensional experience for our viewers, we want to make sure that what we are taking from the real life object and putting onto the pages what we see and not what we know is there. By that, I mean, if I'm looking at, for example, a rose, I know that there are a whole bunch of petals in here and they're all going to be roughly the same size and shape as these outer petals. But I'm not going to draw every single petal inside of this flower being the same shape and size because that's not what we see even though we know in our mind that that is what's there. So this is a very important part of being able to draw curves and folds into our pedals inventory leaves as well. Is this idea of drawing what we actually see a, Not what we know is there. And it's a lot easier to say that than it is to implement it. Especially as a newer artists, to be able to look at something and extract exactly what it is that you see. And leave the rest to your mind to fill in the blank, so to speak. By doing that and taking what we see and translating that onto the page. We're able to show somebody flour and you've got a drying here. We're able to show somebody flowers and they can fill in the blanks for themselves so we don't see all the petals being the exact same shape and size in these poppies. And we certainly don't see that in these peony is either. But what we do see is what we would see in real life with the little I just touched to them, of course. But it allows you to bring the viewer in and allows them to fill in the blank with their minds the way they do in real life as well. So that's a very important component of being able to draw the folds and curves into the leaves and petals. Because if you recognize that you're drawing what you see, then you're able to get that perspective just a little bit better and a little bit more easily than you might have otherwise. So what we're going to be talking about today in terms of drawing the curves on our petals is something called foreshortening. And foreshortening is what is happening on these front petals here. It is also what's happening in this peony in these front petals. And it's what's giving you this perspective that the petals in the front are kind of curving up in, in or out and towards you. And that they are in fact in front. And that this is the back of a flower that we're not just looking at it head on. So for example, you can certainly draw a flower head-on. It's often the way that children first learn how to dry. And I don't mean that in a condescending or patronising way. It's a great way to learn how to draw flowers and recognize the different components. And if you were to drive DZ head on looking at it from straight above, you would be drawing it with the center of the flower and the petals all around it. The difference comes in when we start looking at angles of the flower, how are we looking at? It isn't more head-on, is looking off to the side. Are we looking at it almost perfectly, horizontally so that it almost looks flat to the eye? Or does it have some other kind of a tilt to it? And understanding for shortening and how to add those curves really helps add up perspective and movement to your flowers as you go along.
4. Flowers: Widening Petals: So we are talking, as I mentioned about these front petals here. So you can see in this rows and in this peony as well. And the way to really utilize for shortening and the way to bring out that quality of movement and life in your flowers. Or to do a few things. One of course, to draw what you see. Now what you know is there, which I've already mentioned. The second thing that you're going to want to consider when trying these front petals is that you're going to make them wider then the petals in the back. Like I mentioned, with the rows, we know that all of the petals are actually the same size roughly and roughly the same shape. And this Kerberos has seen better days, but we know that every single pedal and here is roughly the same size and shape. But if I were to look at the rows and dry it, and my perspective is going to be slightly different from yours since you're viewing from above and I'm off to the side a little bit, but you'll understand what I'm getting at here. If I were to draw, for example, this front pedal, which I will do just very roughly. This is the bottom, this part. Here. I will draw this pedal in the front, much wider than I would this pedal in the back. So I'd have all these other petals in here which I'm not going to dry. And then my back pedal would be like so. Okay, so just imagine all the other pedals inherent to make up the rows. And we'll go in more detail a little bit later. But you can see that I redraw this pedal much wider than I would the back pedal. Because of what we're viewing here in this rose example, we're just viewing the very top of the pedal in, even then we're just viewing perhaps half of a top of a pedal. So our perspective is that this is going to be much bigger. If you were looking at allele, for example, and we'll draw the lily together. The same would be true that each of these petals, if I were to take them off and pulled them apart and lay them side-by-side, are gonna look exactly the same in terms of shape. This one has a bit more of a twist to it, but overall it's gonna look generally the same. These three in particular are the same size and these three are the same size, a little bit smaller. But if we're looking at this petal, you can see that what we'd be drawing is in the front. And not only is it closer to us, but we're seeing more of it. And so because of that, we need to make sure that we're making the pedal wider. So let me go into my examples here that are already drawn. So you can see here at this front pedal that if I were to measure it, it's going to be about this wide. And if I'm holding that up against the back pedal, someone's twice as wide as the back pedal back here. And that is because I am showing it coming up towards you and out towards you. And you need to be able to give it that wider width to the pedal so that it looks like it is closer and coming up.
5. Flowers: Shortening Petals: Another thing that you can do as you're drawing these front petals is make them shorter than the back pedal. In this example, it's pretty clear that this is much shorter than the back pedal. It's about two-thirds of the length of the back pedal. Again, that just adds to this perspective of it being coming up in towards you as opposed to being in the back. And in this example, it gets a little bit tricky because this actually looks like it's a lot taller or longer. Then this back pedal, if we were to compare it to any of those. But what we are actually considering is that here, roughly is where that pedal probably attaches to the center of the flower. Whereas this is where this pedal attaches to the center of the flower. So if we were to measure that, you can see it is in fact taller in the back. In terms of the perspective of where you would be measuring, which is from the base of the flower are the pedal up into the top of the pedal. And again, this leaf pedal is much wider, almost twice as wide. It's almost the width of two of these petals back here. But we aren't necessarily viewing it as being that way. We don't see it as being wrong. Here's another example, two other examples of horse shortening and this flower of popular painting at poppies. Again, our pedal in the front here is going to be wider than the ones in the back. And also significantly shorter, wider than the ones in the back. And again, significantly little bit shorter. And I'm not one.
6. Flowers: 2-Sided Petals: So one other aspect that you should be considering when you're using foreshortening to draw the pedals with any sort of curvature, any sort of movement out coming towards you. And any of these folds and curves that really give it that dimension and life is that you want to show different parts of the pedal, particularly in those front ones that are coming up towards you. Again, this is going to add some perspective and help give the viewer an idea of the way that the flower is folding so that you're guiding their mind to view at the way that it's intended to be viewed. So to look at these examples here, you can see in this pedal which we've been using as an example, that we have not only the underside of the pedal is it curves up towards us here, but we also have the inner part of the pedal as it's coming away towards us. And then it curves up here. And that's where you're really getting in that beautiful curve and movement to the pedal. Again, this one, it's hiding part of the inner section of your poppy. So you know that behind this is something you can't see that's kinda coming up and hiding it there. And then it's coming down with the inner part of the pedal and then it curves up at the very end. So you can see the back side a little bit. And again, being able to view the inner part of the pedal and here are just a tiny little bit of the underside, as this pedal is so much more open towards you. But you do get a little bit of that view of the other side of the pedal. Again, just adding a little bit more dimension and movement to it so that you can really guide the viewer's eyes on what they're seeing.
7. Flowers: Foreshortening Walk-Thru: So let's do an example of this. So if we were to take this Lily, and I'm going to hold it this way here so that we have this nice fold down here just to give a good example of this. And again, my perspective is a little bit different from yours. But if we were to view this, lily, I'm going to come up with my outer curves of my front pedal. And I prefer to start with the center and front petals just to give myself a baseline of where to start from. And then again, we're just drawing what we see here. So if you're having trouble getting it right, if you have the actual flower in your hand, you can trace over it with your pencil to really see how you would draw that line, how long it needs to be. You can certainly measure it with your pencil as well. If you're viewing it as a photograph, you can do the exact same thing. Just run your line lately along the outside of the peddled to see how that curve needs to be. And you can certainly measure it if you're viewing an image in the size that you want to create it, you can always zoom in or zoom out if you need to make it bigger or smaller. All right, I'm going to make this part a little bit bigger. Okay? So if this is our flower petal in the front and down here we have our stem coming down. We will then have our center stamen. And I am drawing these pretty quickly and more as a rough sketch to show you what exactly I'm talking about here. You certainly don't need to set through whole-class of watching me take my time draw, drawing all of these, these are certainly things that I use to draw much more slowly than this. So please take that into consideration as you're practicing the use and taking the course. That these are drawings that took a lot longer than I'm going to be taking in this class. And then this back pedal has this beautiful curve to it. Again, I'm just trying to draw exactly what I see. Not what I know is there like I know all of this is in here, but I don't need to draw that part because all I'm seeing is what's coming around. Okay, so let's go through, this isn't my greatest drawing ever, but it will show you demonstrate this for foreshortening to you. So step number one is we drew what we saw, not what we know is there. We know that all of these other pedals are the same size and shape, but they all look different on the page. Step number two is that we are going to make our front pedal wider than our back pedal. And so if we're measuring our pedal, and I'll just draw a line here. So you can see how wide our front pedal is. It is significantly wider across here, then it is back here. There's all this extra space here that this back pedal doesn't even touch. Second part of this is that we want it to be shorter than our back pedal again, considering where the attachment place for the puddles are. So this is going to be the attachment spot for both pedals, since this is the base of the pedal and we can see in this flower, or we would know that all of the petals are attaching at the same place at the base here where the stem meets the flower. So you can see that we have made this pedal quite a bit shorter. Here's the difference here between height of our petals. And again, that's because it's coming out towards you and curving towards you and in the front. And lastly, we are seeing two sides of our pedal. We're seeing this backside of the pedal as it comes up. And then we're seeing the front part as it curves towards us. And this again is just giving us that view of perspective and depth and the difference between all the different petals. And as you can see in these paintings, that gives you a really beautiful contrast between the front and the back. And you know that this is, your mind knows that this is going to be the same size and shape as these other pedals, particularly on this one because all of the other flowers on the same branch have the same rough shape and size as each other. And you know that generally speaking, flowers are going to have petals that are roughly the same size and shape no matter what kinda flat rate is. And so you can really see that this one's in the front and coming up towards you. And that is the perspective that you're seeing and that is what you are actually seeing and not what you know is there. You can even see on this one which is just so many petals on the page that even in a peony that has all the tiny little frilly petals like these, you can still utilize foreshortening on these petals here. And so that is really the way that you want to draw curves into your petals, particularly these front ones coming up towards you. Those are typically the harder ones to do. So next up we're going to talk about how you add curves into leaves.
8. Leaves: Subtle Tilting: There's certainly a few things to think about as you are drying curves into leaves. And having leaves and leaves with curves in them adds so much life to your painting, just like adding that little bit of the curves to your flour does. So. Some of my paintings here you can see these curves and folds. These petals just brings a little bit more later and movement to these drawings here, as these leaves come forward without the folds in the leaves, you can certainly have many different varieties here about what you're going to get is typically, what you got with that Daisy style of drawing is that people typically draw your stem coming down here. And then just very flat style of leaf, which is perfectly fine as you're learning. But if you're wanting to sort of add a little bit more dynamic to it, you don't want all your leaves to be perfectly flat. Of course, some of them can be. You can see here I have some flat leaves, but I also have these leaves coming out towards you and twisting on their side so that they're almost flat. And again here as well, so that you can see a little bit more dynamic and movement to your flower. So in order to dry leaves, two curves into your leaves, there is one thing that you want to follow and that is that you always want to draw your middle vein of your leaf first. So even if you were to draw a leaf just straight up flat towards you, you can have a lot of different dynamic around that. So say you have your middle vein of your leaf. Here's the stem part. We're going to drop our outer sides of our leaf, outer edges of our leaf. You can see that this leaf is pretty much just flat towards you. You could do another one that's flat, that has the same intervene movement to it. But say this wine has a turn to it. And we'll do another one to demonstrate how that one small change can add some perspective. So these are three middle veins with roughly the same gentle curve. The leaves here, but you can see that this one, well it's facing pretty much flat towards you, has these two angled slightly out and away. And that's because we've made the outer edge of our leaf closer to the stem, showing that our leaf is slightly tilted. If this is the center vein of our leaf and we draw it straight on, it's roughly right in the middle. If we tilt it slightly, the side, we're gonna see less of. So we draw less of it. And then we'll draw a wider outer edge of the left side of my leaf. And similarly, if we have it in the center and we tell it the other way, we see less of this side. So we redraw a smaller side, drawn closer to the middle vein as opposed to the right side which we draw farther out. So even if all you wanna do is add just a slight tilt to your leaf, that's a great way to do it.
9. Leaves: Following the Mid-Vein: Now I have created a PDF that you can download in our class here of these leaves that I collected on a walk and I just taped them to this page so that we can see all the different ways that we can draw these Center curbs of our lives and how we can create quite easily. Though with some practice, of course, all these different perspectives based on just following this center vein of our leaf. So I'll draw a couple of these with you. I won't draw all of them, but I want to draw enough so that I can really give you an example of what we're doing here. So let's start with this leaf here. So we're gonna draw first the center vein of relief. It comes down and there's a part we can't see, but we're going to draw that anyway, and then it curves up. So we can't actually see this little part here, but we're going to draw it anyway. That's one key thing that you have to do when you're drying leaves or that I would recommend that you do is as you're drawing the center vein, draw all the parts of it so that you get the curve and the angle right. And then later on, you can come back in and erase the lines that you don't need or that you don't actually see. And then we're going to follow along there right edge of our leaf. And again, I'm coming from a slightly different perspective from you. So if you're following along with me and drawing here, I want you to draw what you see and not what I am drawing. So coming along on the right edge. And this leaf has a little squiggles to it. We are going to come in and come up like this. And then drawing on the other side. We come in almost to the center vein and then come up. And then we need to connect our two here. You might not see that actually. But from my perspective, this is folded up a little bit. And so that's what I drew there. And then I can erase this middle bit in here. So you don't actually see the leaf. But I know that it's coming at the right angle and the right perspective because we follow that mental vein. So let's do another one. For an example. Let's draw this leave next to it. It comes down and then we see it swooping, kind of up and more away. And then drawing the right side of our leaves, we're going to come down. And I don't really see it here, but I'm going to draw it anyway. And I'll just erase it after. And then this comes in, actually crosses the center line, comes up. And I do see those coming up on this side. So even though we don't see this part of the inner mid vein, I'm drawing it. And then I will just erase what I don't see so that you can get that nice fold. This way. You know that the, it's actually, the middle vein is actually folding up and coming up at the correct place. And then you can certainly add means tear leaves here as well. To add a little bit of realism to there, wherever they are coming from, which you can see closer on the leaves here. And like I said, I did make a picture of this so that you can download and zoom into it and dry it exactly as you see it. I know it's kinda hard to see from this video. So I just want to make sure that you are able to really zoom in and see what it is I'm drawing. Let's do another one here. Something I want to talk about as well. Is that let's say we're drawing this leaf down here on the bottom right. And her vein comes down like this. And then I'm going to draw my left side first since it overlap so much on the right. So coming around really overlaps. That middle vein. Comes down here. And then like this, and at least for me I can see a gentle fold here. And then this other one is coming out from under it. But I'm still going to draw through the line even though this part in this section here, I can't see, I'm going to just follow through with my line and add that in there and then I will get rid of this. We'll erase this part that I can't see. And if I were drawing this just on my own, I would be drawing it much later than I'm drawing it now. I'm drawing darker so that you all can see what it is I'm doing easier on camera. So you can see I drew this leaf, the edge of the leaf coming in here, and then I've erased it. And that's simply so that I could get the correct angle of the leaf coming through. This becomes important. If, say, I wanted to then draw a leaf, you know, if this is on another branch, there was another leaf that came through here. So I'm going to draw my central Bain and I'm going to draw it right through this leaf, Even though I want this leaf on top of the other one. And I'll erase all of this. If I come through. And I say I have this leaf here, right? It's terrible rendition, but this leaf here. And I want this other one to come through. If I common, I draw and I start and stop. Like this, you can say, you know, I've exaggerated it a little bit here, but you can see that if I were to follow the line of my center curve all the way through, I'm off here and I'm way off over here on where my center B needs to be and where the tip of my flower leaf needs to be. And if I were to follow the angle of this through, I'm way off over here and I'm slightly off over here. And definitely down here. Unless I wanted to make that a fold in my life and then they certainly could. But you can see if you start and stop as you go through, you're going to come into some issues and I'll show you some flowers of mine where I didn't follow these rules and there are some issues with them. So let's go back to this leaf here. We've drawn this one folded over. And I want another leaf that is attached to the same branch or hanging off the same branch somehow, but I want it to come through. And this leaves doesn't have to be complicated. It can be one that's pretty straight on, but I'm going to draw my lines straight through that. I know exactly where this is naturally going to come out the other side. And then I will go in and we will erase the parts that are going to be headed better leaf is just so that when I come in later to paint in my leaf, I don't know what's happening there. I know that I've drawn it exactly where it needs to be in. It gives it a more organic movement to it then would be if you just drew through that. Well, since this is a little hard to see, I'm going to just demonstrate it really quickly with some green pencils. So you can really see, here's my top leaf. Light green for this. You know, there may be a little bit of shadow in here. Maybe some shatter them here from this leaf credibly folding over. But you get the drift, this is the top leaf and then the lifo is coming under it. It's definitely gonna be darker because it is coming under the leaf. It doesn't have as much light hitting it. Just to give you an idea of where they're intersecting a little bit better. So you can see that it really has this more organic movement to it than what I would get. Just drawing. Otherwise, just, you know, trying to start, start and stop. So you can see how it just really beautifully fits under the other flower. There are the other lif, excuse me.
10. Leaves: Where I Went Wrong: So an example of where it ended her mom is in this drawing that I added to my calendar. And you can see that we have leaves on here, but they look fine, but they don't work quite rate. And that is because they didn't follow this middle. Bain and I did start and stop between the two. So if we were to really get into this, I would say if this is the top curve, I'm gonna go with the part of the leaf that has the nicest curve to it. I would say my little middle vein comes down to here. Okay, so that's fine. This pedal is coming up here. That looks okay. But there we go. So there's a huge gap here where I kinda start and soft and that's just not a, you're not gonna see like angular parts of a flower in real life. So that could have been improved their little bit. Another part that just doesn't quite look, right is this one doesn't quite look right? So I think what I was trying to do is have this leaf go up and then kinda curve down in the back. But this wouldn't this would give this almost like you're 45-degree angle, which you wouldn't really see. So what should have happened is this should've come over here. And then following this along, this leaf would have actually come down way over here and not over here had I followed the correct rules of drawing petals. Let's see another example of where it did like a start stop that didn't quite work out well. Would be down here. And if I were to follow this curve of the leaf, I was a little bit off down here. And that one. And probably should have moved the centering of the leaf down a little bit. Since it's looking like it's tilted, I probably should have changed the width between the two. And then again, the center part of this comes way up here and that's just not right at the center of this leaf, should have come down here. And then this part could have gone up over it a little bit more. And actually the center of this leaf should have come way down here. That would have been the natural for it to be way down there. So you can see, it can look fine, but it's not quite right. And that can really sort of detract the eye from what you're trying to accomplish.
11. Class Project: So I would love for you to practice drawing all of these leaves for a class project and color them in, shade them in whatever helps you really view this perspective. Starting with that century leaf and drawing the outer edges as you go along. I would also recommend that you do a couple of that overlap like this. Whether you make up the ones that you're overlapping or leave them, that's totally up to you. And then erasing that middle part inside that you don't see, that you know that this is a wave coming over, but you now can see how this little line up here connects so beautifully with this line that it's just still really that organic feel. And it starts to really feel like these are actually believes that we're seeing and it feels much more natural and organic in its movement then these ones that are close but not quite, right? So you can do it just in pencil. You can try adding shading or you can try adding some watercolor to it. I've done it and I've uploaded it as pencil drawings. You can see the outline. And I've also added some water coloring to it later so you can see it in color as well if that works better for you.
12. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking this class. It's an absolute joy for me to teach what I have learned over the years as a self-taught artist. And I so appreciate you being here in this class. Don't forget to leave a review and upload your class project to a class project section so that we can see what other people have learned from this class as well. I cannot wait to see you adding some lovely folds and curves to your leaves, him petals in your plurals. And I hope that you enjoy having a little bit more understanding of how to bring some simple movement and life to your beautiful flowers. I'll see you next time.
Isa Down, Illustrator, Writer, Nature Lover
