Leaf Portfolio

This is my leaf portfolio, consisting of two projects aimed around leaves. The objective of this project was to make two projects that somehow included/involved leaves, one being an observational drawing, and the other being an extended gelatin print. This project was actually pretty fun because I liked the idea of taking one subject/object and being able to make a couple different types of projects with it.

To start this project, we first had to go outside and collect a number of leaves that we liked and thought were visually interesting. I got a LOT of leaves because I really wanted to have a variety in what I could include in my observational piece. I also tried to chose leaves with different shapes and textures so that the gelatin prints would be more interesting when I did them. I technically started the observational drawing first, because I chose leaves that were visually interesting (that I didn't want to ruin with ink) to tape down to a piece of paper. That piece of paper with the leaves would be the subject of my observational drawing.

Then I did the gelatin prints. I actually did a lot of them, but not that many popped out to me when I was choosing one to extend. Since my observational drawing was going to be semi-realistic, I decided to take a cartoon-illustration approach with the extended print. I found a print that I did of fern leaves, and they immediately looked like little slugs to me. To keep them from all looking the same, I gave them different facial expressions, sizes and colors.

My second project was the observational drawing, which proved to be way harder than the first project. I struggled a little bit with this one because I couldn't get the proportions of the leaves layered on top of each other just right, but I eventually decided to just push through it and take a semi-realistic route with the project instead of a more photo-realistic approach. I decided to stick to just painting what I saw with watered-down acrylics, because I didn't want to add anything too fancy that would take away from the leaves. I also still wanted the project to contrast with the extended gelatin print.