Let’s draw oak trees from the close, middle distance, and far! When we are close to the tree we sculpt a few branches and leaves, showing bark texture and some of the smaller twigs. From the middle distance, the objective is to show the masses of the leaves with a hint of leaf detail. On
Category: Drawing Plants and Flowers
Tips, tricks, and techniques to help you draw plants and flowers.
Plant Drawing Tricks (video)
Learn techniques to visualize plants to help you draw them plus a grab bag of stratagies to help you draw and paint leaf veins and other details. This live workshop is part of International Nature Journaling Week. You will learn tips and tricks to help you draw plants. I have a bunch of fun strategies
How to Draw White Things (video)
White things are surprisingly hard to draw. With a few strokes, a white flower can turn gray. In this tutorial, we explore techniques for drawing white cottony seed pods, clusters of white flowers, and clouds.
How to Draw Compound Leaves (video)
Live workshop on drawing compound leaves. We explore plant structure and how to sketch pinnate and palmate leaves.
The Iris Project (video)
Join me as I record observations of a Douglas Iris using colored pencil, gouache, watercolor, and pen. In addition to seeing how to draw an iris, learn about starting an observation project in nature near you!
How to draw a Forest (video)
Learn how to draw distant evergreen forests and the view from within the woods. Here we explore layering values (from light to dark) and intentionally controlling the values and detail of each layer.
Watercolor Trees with a Flatbrush (video)
Learn how to paint trees in watercolor with a Kuretake Fude Water Brush Pen, Flat Type, 2 Heads (KG205-70). The brush is great for field sketching. It gives a range of effects that suggest foliage. Also learn how to draw tree trunks so that they appear to advance, recede, or bend.
How to draw leaves and Winter Twigs (video)
Take a stand against Twignorance! Fall is a fun time to look closely at leaves. Understanding leaves with a botanical eye will help you see more and draw more accurately. After the leaves fall, each tree species has unique features, leaf scars and buds from which you can identify the plants even without leaves. Say
Constructing an Iris, Shapes and Negative Shapes
Iris flowers are complex, folded, curling masses of twisted petals and sepals. How do you approach drawing something with so many curling and overlapping layers? The secret is to lay out the structure and then use shapes and negative shapes. Close one eye and flatten the 3D image to interlocking 2D shapes. Click on the
Splash and scribble: wet watercolor and aquarelle pencils (video workshop)
Working with wet watercolor and aquarelle will help your journal sketching become more lively and spontaneous. Instead of carefully drawing lines and then coloring them in, we’ll invert the process, splashing down loose watercolor and then drawing into it to define shapes. We’ll also explore some special effects you can get with wet-on-wet watercolor. This approach