How To Draw Leaves With Two Methods

1. Class Introduction: People seem to be okay with doing these as long as they appear flat, 2D. But as soon as they start to be something like this, turning and twisting, then the problems that, however, during leaves doesn't have to be difficult or you need is some practice and some tips and tricks. I can do the practice for you. That's something you will have to do, but I can help you with the tips. Hi, I'm Kathy. I'm an artist and online teacher and I'm based in Sandy, Sicily, Italy. In this class, I will show you two methods to draw leaves bent or folded. As usual, we will start with the materials you will need and show you how to prepare the leaves from the templates I've provided you with. I will explain why it's important to draw leaves in different positions and how this has a positive impact on your artworks. I will then show you step-by-step how to draw a bent or folded leaf using two different methods. The first method will be by drawing the mid vein first, and the second method will be by drawing the shapes that you see. Once you practice with the paper leaves, you will then be able to move to relieves. By the end of the class, you will have learned two different methods to draw leaves. And with practice, you will be able to apply these new skills to your future paintings and drawings. This class is for you, if you are struggling to draw leaves in a more realistic way, whether you are a beginner artist or even a more experienced at this but still having trouble wintering leaves. So if you're ready, let's get started. 2. Class Project: The project for this class is to draw leaves, of course, lots and lots of them. So you can start with the paper ones that I gave you, the template. And just twist and turn them and try different shapes. And then you can move on to the real ones. Tried to choose some leaves or they're nice and twisting and turning, they have some nice bend. And you can also try some dried leaves. They tend to care quite a lot. By doing this, you can build a library or leaves that you can then use in the future for your drawings and paintings. Don't forget to post pictures of your project in the project section. If you would like my feedback. And also if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask because I'm here for you. 3. Materials: I have here a selection of materials that you need for this class. You will need to necessarily everything here. But I'm just going to show you what I've used. First of all, you will need some pencils to draw with. So you can use a mechanical pencil or you can use just a normal to or HB pencil. Doesn't have to be anything special. Then of course you would need some erases. Either a plastic eraser or one of these is also quite good to erase in this more details, e.g. but if you don't have it, don't worry, just a normal eraser would do. And then if you printing this, so I will give you this in your downloads. If you're printing it, you will see that he has, um, different colors sides. So red and green side and then the mid vein is blue. And this will become clear when we start doing the exercises. If you don't have a printer or if you can't print in color, you can always use a pen with different colors and do this yourself, like I did here. Just use a pen. And I have one of these old fashioned pens. I didn't know there were still doing them, but there you go. And you have green, blue, and red. So you can do the sides and with the black, you can do the veins if you want. I'll just use any color pin that you have handy. And you can use acetate for these exercises if you want. So just this is I think, 180 micron. So you don't need to thick acetate, you can now, this one is quite good. And it will look like this when you, when you draw on it. And if you want to use acetate, you, if your printer allows it, you can print these leaves directly here. If it doesn't, you can use a marker and just sort of trace your shapes of the acetate. You can trace the veins as well, and then you will be able to see this through the acetate. If not, you can just use normal paper. And if you want, you can use a when. It would be good. If you have some wire, it doesn't have to be thick wire, some delay, this is quite good. You can have this I think is for gardening, e.g. and it's okay. And you can have florist wire, I think it's called so something that is not too thick, so it's easy to bend it. If you don't want to use wire, I can show you a little trick to make the leaves bend without the wire, but with a way or you can give different shapes. Alright? And if you use the wire, you will need some tape. So I like to use the Magic tape because it's transparent. So if you using acetate doesn't really impact your view to match. So they use paper tape because it will sort of get in the way. And then if you're using wire, you will need some wire cutters. So I have this small ones because the way it is quite thin, so you don't need a very big wire cutters. And you will need some scissors to cut out your shapes. And I think that's all. So when you have gathered all your supplies, we can move on to the next lesson. 4. How To Use The Template: In this lesson, I'm just going to show you how to do something like this. So I have drawn here a leaf, a leaf shape. I traced this one, but you can do it however you like. And then I'm going to use the colors here from this pen. And I'm going to do this side green. This table is a bit rough underneath. If you have some delay that use something underneath which I should have done, then I'm going to do this side red. And then the mid vein. I'm going to do blue. If it works, this one doesn't work. I'm going to use another pen. If you want. Now you can add a side veins. And then we can just cut this. All right, so we have a leaf here. And then we need some wire. So I'm just going to use this. It's some normal household wire. And as I was saying, is not very, very thick and just try to make it as straight as you can, but it doesn't have to be super straight. And then just check how much you need. I usually leave a little bit as if it was the the petiole of the leaf. And off it goes. I'm just going to get it. All right, good. The way back. So this one was alive. Okay. So I will turn the leaf and put the wire where the center vein is. And then with some tape. What I normally do is I put as more pieces first to keep it still. So just put a few pieces. Maybe I'll put another one in the very tip here. And if it comes out of the tip that you can just turn it over on this side. Okay? And then what I'll do is just to make it a bit stronger. F were a longer piece that came a bit sideways, but that's okay. Then you have your, your live. And where you do next is to bend it to mimic the real leaves. So you have some leaves like that. And you have leaves that come towards you like this. And it could be turning like that. And of course, if you have longer leaves like this one, um, you will be able to do some turning like this or even something like that, which some leaves too if I can bend it. So some delay this. So it will, if not, of course it will do. It will be different when you can actually put this leaf in front of you like that. But I can't show you this on the camera. So it will be it will be a different view. This is how I set up the leaf. And of course you can do that with the, with all of these leaves. And I'm actually, I'm actually can show you the other method. Now, since we're talking about the templates, the lifting plates, and what you want to do is you do like this, where you live or the video. Fingers don't pull too hard or it will break, or just like this. So when you do that is the same sort of principle that when you do this with a piece of, um, ribbon, when you do that for the Christmas presents. And as you see, the leaf starts to bend. So especially this long leaves, it works really well. So it will bend. And then you can look at it from different angles. And you don't need to have, uh, the, the wire in it. So if you look at it this way, you will see that the list has two distinct when he's bending. Okay, so that's all for the leaf template. And I will see you in the next lesson. 5. Tips For Holding The Leaves: Something that I didn't mention earlier is one of these. Because not everyone has got one of these and they're not real expensive, but you might not want to buy it. But in case you have, one of these is one of those things they use to wield things together, I think. But I find it quite useful for holding your specimen. So if you have a leaf, maybe this is too long and it wouldn't need the wire. But if you have one of these leaves with a wire, you can put it in, in the little hand here and holding it. And then you can bend your leaf and then you will have it facing you. So you would have this sort of view. And then you can move your leaf and you can look at it, endure it. So if you have something like that, um, even a simpler version of this, there are some, some were just won a branch saluting one hand. And it's quite useful. But as I say, not everyone has one of these at home. So you can just find something to rest your leaf or you can just hold it with your hand but it needs to stay still. So even maybe a kneading eraser and you can just put it like that and you rested on your, um, on your desk and you can look at it and you can put it in different directions. So that's the cheap and easy and quick fix if you don't have a dissolute thing. But there's lots of way you can sort of fix this somewhere. 6. The Importance Of Movement: So why should we draw this leaves, the leaves that are so difficult to draw? Well, here are some examples of my work, and I just wanted to show you how they killed the leaves are actually quite important when you do something like this, even a simpler version of this. Because when you have this leaves the move like this, e.g. the curve or like this one in here, e.g. that this leaves the curl around, uh, this one here, this one here. So even this one. And here you don't see the move, the leaves actually curling or folding, but they still have some movement. And here we have this one that is folding, and this one here that is folding. So when you have leaves like this, they actually give movement to your paintings or your drawings. If you draw in graphite, it doesn't have to be a colored painting. But it will give you that movement that gives a sort of realistic effect. So if you have all the leaves, simply, Let's say you have a flower here and the leaves are just all like that. Like flat and, or towards you or looking like this. It's kind of a flat, almost naive. I'm painting, drawing, whatever, whatever you do. I mean, it can be a style, so I made it a bit smaller, I think, for the camera. So I'm going to make it a bit bigger and a big, a bit darker. There we go. That this, you can see it better. So it can be, I was saying a style, of course. And you can now very, very stylized flower there. But as you can see, is very flat and static. So if you like this sort of thing, it's like, I'm almost like a graphic design, e.g. it could be good for pattern design. But if you want to do something a little bit more realistic with a little bit more flow and more life to it. Then as soon as you start adding leaves, that sort of care. And I'm gonna do something like really easy here. I'm not going to use much time. So some delay this and some delay that C, As you can see, this is already giving the idea of movement. So I'm going to put it a bit closer to the camera so you can see the difference here. And even with the petals, I'm not sure if I have an example in here, but here, e.g. this, this petal is sort of curving. These ones are seen by the side, so they are curving. This petals here. You can see the side of it. I'm going to put it closer. So, and this petal here. And let's see. These petals are also curving so you can apply what I'm going to teach you, um, when you, during flowers as well. If you have e.g. the petals like this for the rows or this one e.g. is also conveying. And this one a little bit, but not too much. And if you have, um, like a daisy or something where the petals, you can see them like a foreshortened. So it's not face, face on, like simply seeing from the front like this. But you can draw them where the front ones are a little bit shorter and then it looks as if it's tilted a little bit. Well, this is not the best example, but you know, something like that. And then one of these petals could be sort of have a little bit of a moment and could be something like that. So it can be funded. So as you can see, you can apply what you learn for the leaves, for the petals as well. So let's say this is the back of the petal. Depends what flower you doing. So this is why it's important to learn how to draw leaves like this, because it just gives you a sort of a different look to your work. It will give you this flow and movement, um, and make everything a bit more realistic as well. Okay, so that was just a little explanation why this is important. It's an important skill to learn. And now we can move on to the next lesson. 7. First Method - First Example: Okay, So we are finally going to draw the leaves. And I have two methods to show you. One of them is to use the midrib and draw that first. Now, it would be a bit different. You'll view from my view. So if you see different drawing on the page From where you can see the leaf is, it will be for that reason, but hopefully I will show you how to, I will explain probably out to do this. So you can start with bending your leaf in a way that you like. And then I could do this one, which is maybe the simplest one to start with. So you will see that way. I have to tilt it a little bit because otherwise I won't see properly when I'm drawing it. But this should be the view. So the point pointing towards you when you have it upright and facing you. I hope this makes sense. Okay, So here we go. So I'm going to start. So the first method I'll show you is using the midrib. So when you look at the midrib, just draw that. And so if I do it a little bit like this. So you don't have this midrib coinciding with this one. So it's less confusing to start with. So you need to draw this curve. Some delay that. And then the green side, the side on the left, it goes like this and then he turns and he comes down. Then you have the side here. And then the red goes on this side. So it does this curve. Again, it will be a little bit different from your view in my view. So something like that, maybe a little bit less pronounced here. The eraser is your friend here. And of course, light touch. And then here you have this part. So let that, and then when you finish that, you erase where you don't see or you can't normally see, which is this line here. With this method, you will erase, you would do all the line and then erase the ones that you don't normally see. And you have your, your first leaf, which is more or less some delay that it will always be a little bit different from what I see, but more or less is that it's all a matter of following the lines. 8. First Method - Second Example: If you have something like that. So let's say in front of you, the leaf will be looking something like this. So I'm going to position it in a way that I can see the curve. And again, we're going to draw the midrib first. So you will see, see probate around like this. So draw the curve of the midrib. Okay. And then this red side. So it goes on a curve and it crosses the midrib. Bit more light that goes on a curve, crosses the midrib around here. And then it goes on the right side of the midrib, right? So thus the red line, the green line is at the back. So again it goes into a curve. So you can see this curve here, sort of like that. And then it crosses the midrib and the side that is facing you. So sort of like this. And then you can see it from the bottom. All right. Now this part here, it's behind and we cannot see it. So that's why I tell you to draw lightly. Because then we can delete that. And then we can sort of adjust this a little bit like that. And we have the leaf that is, I'm turning. Okay, Just always observe it really closely. You can see here that the leaf is sort of slanting. And of course, as I said, there will be different because I see it more, more like this way, um, and it's very difficult to show and gamma exactly the same way I see it. But the principle is this. You just observe it. See where the lines go, follow it. The back one goes down like that. So it says that curve. So this curve and then just delete whatever you don't need. And this is important to start with the midrib. Because if you have a midrib starts and carries on in a weird place, then it would show. So e.g. if you do the leaf first and if you do the midrib that starts here, and then you carry on here. You can see that it's not quite right. So this midrib is not continuous. And an expert, I will see straight away that it wasn't don't, um, as a one continuous line, it wasn't done properly. But you just did something just to do a midrib. So it's important that is continuous is a continuous line. I will show you another method to do this without doing the midterm professor. But you still have to make sure that he's a man, he's got continuity. Okay, so then you can just keep moving your leaf and do it from the other side. Uh, you know, put it sort of like like a different angle, select these different ways. Maybe seeing from the back, it makes a difference. Also, the way the, the leaf is stilted. And if you have a leaf that is stilted, that way, e.g. you can see this a bit larger than this, a bit smaller this side. So if you have the site, if you have a midrib here and you want to show the leaf that is a bit tilted. You draw this side smaller and this side bigger. And as you can see, it looks already like a stilted. And of course it's the same if you do the other side. So this side is a bit bigger and they said is a bit smaller and it's kind of tilted another side. And the same if you do it horizontally. So you can always have a look at your life in your hand. You can pick a real leaf if you want. But if you put it in front of you and you tilt it, you will see that one side looks bigger than the other. So e.g. if we are decides molar and this side bigger, it looks like it's tilted a little bit. So just the only way to keep in brewing a drawing leaves that attorney and bending is just to practice. So practice a lot. Try different shapes if you want. Once you must have one shape, you can try a different one. Try different positions. And you can try with the acetate so you can draw the mid veins. You will see also how turning affects the mid veins. Okay, and then when you're ready, just pick a real leaf and try that one. E.g. you can pick some died, dead leaves that tend to kill a more easily. Or you can just, some plants of leaves that the sort of curling and folding naturally. 9. Drawing Long Leaves: I just wanted to show you how to draw a longer leaf as well. So if you have this one, this leaf printed, or you can just draw it and you are the wire. You can turn it like that. Or I suppose you can use that method I showed you before. When you do this with your fingers and it's sort of, um, kills. But to do this sort of moment, I think the wire is probably better. And then where you see the front of the leaf and the leaf, I'm turning. So let's see if I can show you on camera more or less what I see, which is something like that. And then I would move it a little bit so that I can see it that way. And again, what you need to do is to draw the the mid vein. So always start with that when using this method. Then this is the red side of the leaf. Okay, so as you can see here, it starts from the right and then goes down. And then it sorts around this side here, this point here, it crosses the midrib and goes down. Okay, so that's the red side, the one side, which is the left of the leaf. And then the other side, which is the green, which we can't really see that much on this side, but is the, the buck say that the moment. So it starts from this side. So the left here. And it goes down. And then more or less with the other one, the other side crosses. It also crosses on the other side. And it comes down on the right. This here. Okay, So you have this turning of the leaf. And now here we just have to make a little bit of an adjustment like this and then we delete what we don't see. And we have the leaf that is turning, as you can see here. And then this is the back of the leaf. So when you paint, you can, you would need to look at what color because normally leaves are different colors. Usually isn't always the case, but usually I'm maybe he's a lighter color compared to the front of the leaf. The top, which is called a duct cell. I think the top and the back is called axial. But thus a technical talk. You don't need to know that if you don't want to draw a botanical paintings. But if you just want to do some flower, I'm a flower painting than a top and bottom. That's a quite enough to know. Okay, so thus, the back, which will be probably a lighter color, and then this would be the front of the leaf, which will be a darker color. And it's the same principle as you did before. Just follow this, make sure you follow the lines of the perimeter of the leaf. So if it's turning this side, than just do the same thing. And you can adjust it. Of course, this sooner or later they will start steering and braking, but you can always print another one or we can just draw another one. It's a good idea to keep a copy of this. So instead of cutting this, uh, just trace it. If you want or make more copies. That's up to you. And I actually added the name of the shape of the leaf. I'm just if you're interested. So this, this type of shape is elliptic. This is linear. A lengthier lead because it's, um, the smaller the top 08 when he's a bit more round like this. And oval is because it's all sort of rounded. Instead they overweight as the smaller OpEx here. So just a little extra information. So you can practice this lobed leaves as well. And it's always the same principle, just follow the lines. And in the next lesson, I will show you another method to draw the leaves. I'll see you in the next lesson. 10. Second Method: In this lesson, I'm going to show you the second method to draw leaves that are bending or turning. And this method is more to do with the shapes. So I'm going to bend this as I did before. And again, I will look at it sort of more or less this week. Okay, but I need to turn it a little bit. So when you look at this leaf, I'm that way. Then where you can actually look at the shapes that it forms. It forms a triangular shape in here if you have a look. So it's like a triangle. And then the rest of the leaf, It's kind of goes sort of like that. So this is one shape. And the shape is like a triangle. So you divide the object into shapes. And some people prefer this approach. So with this approach, you draw the triangle. So I will look, you're always observe you live. So I'm going to try and look at the camera while doing this. Let's see if it works. So it's sort of pointing this way. So I wouldn't have to move the leaf for you. And you can observe something that is more similar to AUC. We see if it's working. So we have a triangle here. And then in here, it's a bit rounded. So he goes down. And then it sort of girls bit narrower down here. And this and move it a little bit. Otherwise it will be the same line. It might be confusing. So if I'm always a little bit like that, of course you always should try not to move you leave while you're doing it. This is just for demonstration. Just put in one position and don't move it. So this also is rounded here on this side. And this, uh, this space. It's less than this space because it's a bit turned. So because I moved it, this one should be a bit more now. So this space here is less than this. Always look at the shapes, the form. And this is also going a bit narrower at the bottom. Right, so that's the leaf. And then a, for the midrib. Again, try to make sure that it's a coherent and is not just anywhere. So it starts from the point here and it goes down. But then I'm not going to lift the pencil, but I'm going to draw the rest of the midrib. And if you look, you live, you can see that comes out sort of in the middle of this line. So this line here around the middle, probably. So without lifting the pencil, you just draw the midrib. Now, this bit here, you don't see it. It's this bit here. Okay? So it's this triangle here this year. So because we don't see it, we can erase it all. We have to erase it. And there you go. We have the leaf. And sometimes the leaves are a little dip, sort of like that. It depends on your life. What are you doing? This is quite flat because paper, um, but just observe the leaf and this detail here. You can do it afterwards. First, you can just draw it straight, and then you can add your detail. Okay. And the mid rape, it's, uh, it's where it should be. So don't do something like this, so we don't know the one quick. So we have the triangle. We have this here, this here, some delay there, and then the midrib. And let's say you do it here. Okay? So that's wrong. If you have a midrib that is going this way, it can just suddenly come up around here. So that's one of the most important things. Once you must do this, then you're okay with doing leaves. Just remember not to guess where the imagery base and the one side and then do the other one because you can see afterwards something is wrong with it. So thus, the second method where you draw using the shapes instead of the midrib first. And that's all for the second method. Again, practice, practice both methods if you want to. You never done this before and see which one you like most, because you won't know which one is best for you unless you tried both of them. And then after this you can get a real leaf and try that one. 11. Let's Use Real Leaves: I have some lives here that I took from the garden. These are from orange trees and this is from a queen's, a tree. So as you can see, some of these leaves, they have this natural sort of bending and turning. And if you find something like this, it's really good for you to practice with. So this one is not really turning, but it's got this little bend here and you can turn it different ways and see, find some interesting points of view, e.g. here you can see this. You can see a little bit of the back of the leaf and then the other side of the back disappears. So you can choose one of these, these ones. They don't really turn too much, but they have this shape, this a V-shape. So they are quite good if you want to draw them. This way, e.g. um, it's difficult to show on camera. But you can see here this side for somebody, you can see the underneath of this side and then you can see the other side of the leaf. And this one is a bit like that, but it's a bit bending. So maybe if you put it in front of you, you can see it like the example we did with the paper leaf. So there is that, um, triangle shape at the frontier with this. So the triangle shape and then there's the other shape. So you can find a leaf like that and practice with real life. So n is the same thing. You can draw the mid vein first. So let's see one way that I can put this. So this is turning away nicely laid out so you can draw the mid vein first. So let's have a look. We could do something more or less Sunday like that. Okay. And then this could be our red side. So you have the leaf that goes up here. And then it crosses the midrib. So it's a bit dark on this side, but it's just because the light comes from here. But the midrib is there. So the, this side crosses the midrib. Let's see around here maybe. And then you can do this, um, the contours straight at first, and then you can add any detail afterwards. So once you're happy with the general shape, you can sort of add the details afterwards. And if you keep the pencil line late, it will be easy to do. You can just erase it. Okay? So that's this side. Now we have the bottom side, which I see a bit more than the ones you see on camera. So it's something like that. Then it goes down. It crosses around here. And I'm going to draw this bit too. And then sort of goes like that. And then we have the petiole. Okay. And then here, just before the mid vein we have a little bit of a bump. And then this side here, it's a bit like that as well. So we don't actually see the mid vein in here and this bit. Okay. We don't see this which is the which is the bottom side, the side that the back. So it's a bit like that. So once you delete, you do you erase the lines that you can't actually see, then it makes more sense. Okay. And then if you can see the veins, you can also do those in. So if you want to do a botanical drawing, then you would have to measure this. But if you want to just do some Florida during, then you don't need to measure this. This vein here. Can't really see it much, but I'm just going to sort of do a little bit of a shape there. Okay. And then at the back you have veins as well? They're in there. Okay. So maybe this one was a bit shorter but you can adjust that afterwards. So you do the general shape and then you look at it again and then your adjusted. And, uh, that's why you should always keep the pencil late. Did I say that already? I think I did. Okay. So get some real leaves and observe them and see where they sort of the band. And, um, you can use the shape methods, you can use the midrib method, but just practice. And you will see that you will improve. And this here is sort of, um, let's see, maybe I can put it that way. It's probably a little bit easier. You can still use the midrib like that. And then this would be, let's say the, the red side. So it goes like that. And then that's the green side. Goes like that. May just shorter, doesn't matter. And then you have a little bit of a dip here and there and decided a little bit as well. And you can see some of what I can I can see some of the veins. So it goes up and does something like this. So if I turn it, Let's see. You can see the veins because they are quite pronounced at the back. And also it does this little bumps. But these, you'll be able to reproduce them only with the light and shadow when you actually use color or you use pencil. So let's see how it was. And in here, I can see some of the veins as well. So the midrib is actually this. So you don't see where the veins start because they will start from here. But if it's easier for you to draw them like this, then you can do something really light and then press a bit more. And the veins are, you can see here they are the ones at the back, from the back of the leaf. Okay, so there we go. I hope this is helpful. And I hope you're going to have fun during lots of leaves. 12. Final thoughts: Congratulations on completing the class. I hope you've enjoyed it and I hope you found my tips for drawing leaves useful. Your next step is to practice, of course, Joe, lots and lots of leaves build your lease liability. Remember, I think give you the guidance, but you're going to have to put in the work. Don't forget to post your pictures in the project section. And also don't forget to hit the Follow button up here. If you would like to be notified as soon as I post a new class. You can also check out my profile to see my other classes. If you like to connect, you can find the social media links down here. If you have enjoyed the class, please leave a good review because that will be really helpful. Thanks again for watching the class and I'll see you in the next class. Bye.