Leaves

For this project, the goal was to create a leaf portfolio consisting of one rendered drawing of three or more overlapping leaves, and at least one hand-manipulated gelatin print. I started with my gelatin prints. I chose to use navy blue ink because I knew I wanted to hand-manipulate the print with color and wanted to create contrast. I started with a sprig of leaves that fanned out in a very symmetrically satisfying way. I was not hugely inspired with these prints (I did evaluate the negative prints as well). A classmate of mine was doing his gelatin prints as well with orange ink. I covered the gelatin block with navy ink and placed the leaf with orange ink face-side up and pressed my paper on top of it. I loved the result! I played around with this color contrast for a while. I then returned to using the blue ink, and broke up the sprig of leaves to lay them next to each other. I knew that I could always hand-manipulate the prints if they weren't interesting by themselves.

I ended up using one of the orange leaf/navy background prints. I wanted to keep the color contrast as is because it would be more jarring as is than if I were to add more colors. I used a fine point black pen to extend the lines, and trace the shape of the leaves. I used the same technique for one of the just navy ink prints. I kept with the same color scheme and used an orange fine point pen. After doing that I went back in with a fine point black pen to make the lines stand out more and make the series more cohesive. I'm very happy with the way these prints turned out. I forgot how much I love printmaking and I definitely want to explore more this year.

My rendered leaf drawing was a challenge. Realistic drawing is not one of my strong suits so I was kind of nervous going into this project. It's hard for me to draw what I see rather than what I know. I used a 4B pencil to sketch out the lines of my composition. I chose to lay my leaves outside the border. I used one big leaf that covered half the page and then three smaller leaves on the other side to create balance. To challenge myself even more I chose to use colored pencils. I try to force myself to use this material as much as possible because I want to learn to use them properly and effectively. I did a lot of blending and layering. I made up the colors because by the time I got around to drawing my leaves they had all turned brown. I included the border in the composition because I've never really played around with the border and I wanted to experiment. After drawing four leaves, I realized a grease stain on my page and I had to draw a tiny leaf to cover it up. I then used a very sharp 4B pencil to outline all the leaves. I love the way this turned out. Again, I really pushed myself with the colored pencil and I think because I was so focused, it turned out really well. This is one of my strongest if not my strongest realistically rendered observational drawing.

Overall, I feel very confident about my leaf prints and drawing. I spent a lot of time working these pieces and it paid off.