Zoom Shoe

The subject of my drawing is a leaf that has been blown up. This painting took me a long time to make. I started with a pencil sketch of the lines I would start with. I did this by separating the reference and my paper into 16ths once I finished I outlined it in pen. After sketching in the primary lines, I figured out where the leaf would spread out and the light source. When I started using watercolor, I realized that the shadow area would stand out too much if I used black, and the lines I have to fill in are almost too thick to work. When I realized this I sketched the entire thing all over again changing the light source to the upper right corner. When I used the watercolor I slowly worked up the colors and contrast. When I was doing this I overworked the paper. Finally, I polished a couple spots with water and used white paint to fix the border. I used line to outline the form and I used color, texture, and value to add realism to the form. My project started as a sketch, then it became a drawing in pen, then a watercolor which slowly increased in contrast, and finally, I polished it using water and white paint.

I chose to create this specific painting because the initial lines reminded me of the branching pattern in a leaf. This, hopefully, will help improve my watercolor and replication skills. One of my goals for this year was to chose a new medium to learn and I chose watercolor (I'm more comfortable with graphite, charcoal, colored pencil, ink, and acrylic). If I re-did this project I would:

• Spend more time planning it out
• Build up colors faster
• Use less water
• Remember to tape down my project before using water so it wouldn't wrinkle

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this piece. I like how I used the color theory I recently learned (Choosing a direction to go on the color wheel for shadows and highlights). I think this gave the piece a more natural look. Also, I like how I did not cover every single section of the page with pigment (I'm used to doing this in acrylic).