I visited Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, today for some outdoor drawing in its beautiful historic neighborhood. I was looking for crepe myrtles but didn’t find exactly the sort of tree I wanted, and so I settled instead for a drawing of a leafy shrub growing along the wall of someone’s town house. I have a painting project that includes many leaves in a dense pattern so drawing studies of leaves is an always helpful exercise.
For this drawing I used oil pastel on an 18 x 24 inch notebook. The ends of the metal easel are visible at the top and bottom of the photo.
I took a photograph of the plant and if anyone knows what it is, please leave the plant name in a comment. I am notoriously ignorant about plants, much as I love drawing them. But I do wish to learn their identities!
In making my drawing of leaves, I’m influenced by the way that Eugene Delacroix drew plants. Below is a drawing of hollyhocks (rose trémière) that illustrates his characteristic short hand way of drawing the contours of the plant’s parts.
With such a proliferation of leaves my drawing doesn’t deal with the whole plant in any way. I chose instead to focus on particular branches. During the course of drawing I got lost and forgot momentarily which branch I was drawing, which of itself provided some interesting information because it revealed how similar the different branches really are, right down to the shapes of individual leaves. I noticed then for the first time that the ends of the branches sometimes terminate in very similar leaf patterns.
So, as always when drawing from life, you learn something new.
It’s beautiful, I hope someone knows what it is! Wonderful drawing too. (K)
thank you, Kerfe!
Is the foliage scented?
not that I noticed ….
I wondered if it was Myrtle but that has a scent, I think
Strange to say, I don’t know! I have been around them forever. I’m thinking not — but I’ll have to double check, Rosie!
Plant detectives 😀