Learning to foreshorten leaves will allow you to draw them from any angle, adding life and dynamism to your sketches. Foreshortening causes some surprising distortions of the leaf shape.
To help you intuitively understand these changes, download and print the leaf model and follow along as you study this post, comparing what you see in the model with the demonstrations.
Click on the first image to start a slide-show tutorial.
A leaf (or petal) that is pointing toward you will appear to get shorter as it foreshortens. The tip of the leaf will also appear less sharp.
Notice that the angle of the leaf veins also changes. On the foreshortened leaf the angle of the veins is much flatter and the veins appear closer together. Notice the same change in the rectangular diagram below. As the rectangle gets shorter, the angles and spacing of the diagonal lines must change.
If the leaf is rotated along its long axis, it appears to get narrower with a sharper tip,
