Foliage
It’s been a while
since I last gave a ‘lesson’ and so please let me start with a reminder of my
usual caveat. I’m totally self taught, and all I can tell you is about my way
of doing things. I’m not recommending it as the right way or the best way, just
explaining that this is how I do it, in the hope that this might help.
Now, most of the
time foliage – by which I mean trees, bushes and grasses – is definitely not
the ‘star’ of my sketch. I’m not deiberately dissing foliage here, but I’m a city
boy originally, and what I find excites me is achitecture, machinery and people.
So I tend to keep to limit the foliage to outlines with a few light shading
marks. This usually provides a nice contrast with the actual object of the
sketch. For example, in the sketch of a bridge in Aberavon below, the lightly
sketched grass and the sky together frame the bridge, which is the real ‘star’
of the picture. A few vertical or almost vertical strokes do a good job of
conveying the suggestion of grass to the eye.
In a similar way, in the sketch below which
shows Pontrhydyfen Aqueduct, the darkness of the stone contrasts with the
outlines of the forestry, which have not been shaded at all. To keep it light,
I sketched in a few areas of shadow, but merely left them as outlines, which is
a technique that I find can work particularly well when you’re trying to sketch
in trees and bushes.
A couple more
examples of me using this technique are these two sketches:-
The British Lion Pub
Cwmavon. In this sketch I’ve even included outlines of some of the larger
leaves, but again, none of the foliage is actually shaded, because the building
is the focus, not the trees.
I like this sketch below,
of Dyffryn Rhondda Post Office in the Afan Valley, because there is a contrast
between the trees on the right, and the grassy hill side on the top left of the
sketch.
Now, this minimalist
technique for sketching foliage is fine when you are making a building, or
something else the focal point of the sketch. However there may be times when
you want to sketch the foliage itself in more detail.
This is a sketch of
the disused Cynonville Railway Station. The track was ripped up decades ago,
and the station now is on the route of a cycle path from Afan Argoed Country
Park. Its leafy, overgrown appearance is very much the point of what I wanted
to show about it.
As with the bridge
picture, I’ve used vertical, or near vertical lines to show grass. However, as
you can see I’ve applied far more shading to the bushes. If I was really
focusing on the hut, then I’d just have only drawn the outlines of the shaded
patches, and not all of them either for that matter. With this amount of
shading you just can help but be struck by how overgrown the place is, and the
hut itself seems to be merging into the foliage, which is very much the idea
that I wanted to convey – that the trees and grasses are slowly reclaiming the
land.
Then there’s this
sketch I made of my own back yard:-
If you look at it
closely, you can see that it’s actually an inversion of the way that I usually
depict foliage in a sketch. The buildings are lightly shaded, where shaded at
all, while there’s heavy shading on the bush, and many of the individual leaves
are sketched and even some of their marking details are sketched in. And the
reason is that when I made the sketch, I felt that the bush was as much the
‘star’ of the picture as any other element.
A few random points
If foliage is not
the most important element of the sketch:-
·
The more shading of the foliage that you do, the more you
will draw attention towards the foliage and away from the main elements of the
sketch, which isn’t what you want to do.
·
You can get good effects by simply sketching in the outlines
of blocks of foliage, and also the outlines of areas of shading.
·
A few vertical, or near vertical lines sketched close
together can give the appearance of grassy areas.
If foliage is one of
the most important elements of the sketch:-
·
Sketch in areas of shading. As with many things, the more
different gradations of shading you use to suggest lighter and darker areas,
the more detailed your foliage will appear.
·
Heavy shading tends to make foliage appear denser, bushier
and more overgrown if this is the effect that you want to achieve.
·
You can achieve some very appealing effects by using areas of
dark shading around negative space in the shape of individual leaves,
especially if the background to the tree or bush itself is lightly sketched in.
