Tulsi Basil in watercolor pencil and paint. Left: Practice page. I sort of goofed up the leaves at the top and didn’t know how to correct so I moved on. Middle: This is tiny. Like an inch and a half. I’m not happy with how dark the leaf in the middle is although it is darker in the photo. I’m not sure how to correct this. Right: mostly happy with this although I feel like the plant isn’t connecting with the bottle… like it’s floating. And the highlight on the bottle bigs me. Too small? Too big? Wrong color? Hmmmm.
Hi Kristen, I’d like to see a closer view of each drawing. Seems like you have some good stuff going on, but hard to see on my screen. From what I can tell, you are right about going dark, but for my part I like the richness, You just need to be careful building it up. Wendy has a great video on leaves where she is more drawing the space between the veins than the veins themselves. And she draws very slowly, carefully observing and slowly building the darks. I think if you add a shadow of the plant on the bottle you will integrate it better. Maybe fudge that center leaf down a bit, so it overlaps more. Also the bottle could be rendered more cylindrically. Highlight is good, but you need more work on the shadows. Especially in the twine around the neck. I’d also like to see a cast shadow on both drawings with bottles.
Tulsi Basil in watercolor pencil and paint. Left: Practice page. I sort of goofed up the leaves at the top and didn’t know how to correct so I moved on. Middle: This is tiny. Like an inch and a half. I’m not happy with how dark the leaf in the middle is although it is darker in the photo. I’m not sure how to correct this. Right: mostly happy with this although I feel like the plant isn’t connecting with the bottle… like it’s floating. And the highlight on the bottle bigs me. Too small? Too big? Wrong color? Hmmmm.
Hi Kristen, I’d like to see a closer view of each drawing. Seems like you have some good stuff going on, but hard to see on my screen. From what I can tell, you are right about going dark, but for my part I like the richness, You just need to be careful building it up. Wendy has a great video on leaves where she is more drawing the space between the veins than the veins themselves. And she draws very slowly, carefully observing and slowly building the darks. I think if you add a shadow of the plant on the bottle you will integrate it better. Maybe fudge that center leaf down a bit, so it overlaps more. Also the bottle could be rendered more cylindrically. Highlight is good, but you need more work on the shadows. Especially in the twine around the neck. I’d also like to see a cast shadow on both drawings with bottles.