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Wonderful page Patricia! You captured the look and feel of autumn! It certainly looks like what I see when I go out my door! The colors are spot on and some leaves really exude that look of wet decay. It is hard to walk down the street and bypass all the wonderful subjects that there are right now.

Thank you. Doug. Yes, so many leaves calling out for attention!

My neighborhood is filled with crab apple trees. I thought this would be a good chance to practice overlaps and multiple elements. I’m at the “scared to wreck it” stage.

You are off to a great start Erin! The stem and fruit look wonderful and seem completed to me. The leaves are almost there. The two, large center leaves need more dark and mid-range tones to give them definition. Thinking of where the light hits a leaf, there is a dark side of the main vein and a light side of a main vein. Right now, each side of…[Read more]

Thank you Doug! That’s very helpful

Welcome back Becky! It is great to see your work again! This is an outstanding piece! Bravo!

from a sketch book

The blue flower is not an easy color to capture. Beautiful! The flowers have wonderful definition!

I am making quick drawing of NC native plants that grow around me. This one uses two pages, hence the break in the middle.

Great Machi! What a wonderful project! The flowers have good strong saturated yellows and golds! The leaves add a whimsy to the piece as if the flowers are dancing together!

i started this a few days ago and by the time I went to paint the leaves they had changed so much1 I decided to start again and draw two leaves and just keep the rest as background.

Gorgeous! It looks like you could pick the ginkgo leaf up off the page! As I mentioned on the previous post, the cast shadows are too dark. Besides their shapes not being what I would expect. Personally I don’t know that you need cast shadows for this drawing. Because the shadows are dark, they create a lot of contrast and detract from the b…[Read more]

Thank you, Doug. I always appreciate your thoughtful and helpful comments. Yes, I do often work at a desk with two lights right over my work because the room doesn’t get enough good light. Shading and cast shadows continue to be a challenge in all of my work. I appreciate you pointing it out.

These were treasures from a walk last week. The horse chestnut surprised me with a design in the white part. Capturing its shape and color continues to be challenging.

I love the colors and composition of this page! The one thing that throws me is the conflicting shadows. Some go to the left and some to the right and the chestnut goes down. The cast shadows of the chestnut, two leaves on the right and cherry are also too dark. Lightening the cast shadows would help this drawing and making them consistent would…[Read more]

Beautiful leaves Denise! I see that the bottom leaf has a bright highlight to indicate a shiny leaf, which is how I think of holly leaves. If the leaves are shiny, you might want to make the highlights whiter.