For me this month has been full, and I'm still plugging away at my projects. Hang in there, you shall be seeing more stuff soon! In the meantime, I have done some more nature sketches that I can share with you. Yesterday I went with my sister and her fiance to Boyce Thompson Arboretum just outside Superior, Arizona. It is a beautiful desert landscape garden with trails and other recreation activities available. It has a small forest of Eucalyptus Trees, a cactus garden with every sort of cactus you can imagine, twisting and piled high rock formations, desert nooks and crannies, and even a sweet little herb garden. There is so much to look at and explore there and is a perfect place to find a little hideaway spot to just draw. Another point of interest is the large mansion-like house of the Boyce Thompson family that was built when they purchased the land in the early 1900s. It is situated grandly on top of a cliff that plunges into a ravine filled with large trees and foliage. I do not know much on the history, but I do know that they built an elevator within the cliff itself that would take them down right into the ravine. I thought that was really neat. Needless to say, I love visiting this place and spending most of the day with my pencil and sketchbook under the shady trees or overhanging rocks.
In these three sketches that I did I applied the same techniques I was speaking of in my last nature post. What I did was I found something that interested me and I would do a quick, rough sketch of the subject. However, instead of continually referring back to the subject as I would sketch, I would rely on my imagination for the rest of it. This way I would keep the piece more conceptual than literal and I could focus on composition and other aesthetics. It has served me well to do this and pushes me to interpret reality in a way that would capture the "spirit" of the subject more fully. I'm happy how these came out. I hope you enjoyed them!
Hi Danielle. It was great to see you today. I love these beautiful drawings. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteHi! Thanks so much for stopping by my blog. It was good seeing you today. :) I'm glad you love my drawings. I hope to be able to do some more next month, my siblings and I will probably head up to Payson for a day trip, so there should be some more up for you to enjoy! Have a great day!
DeleteThose are great sketches. I love the Eucalyptus trees.
ReplyDeleteHere is something that I thought was interesting about Eucalyptus: the name came from a french botanist who coined the term from the root greek word "Calyptos" meaning hidden, because of the outer bud caps which hide and protect the flower as it develops, until the pressure breaks through it and reveals it. Calypto is also the Greek word referred to in Matthew 5:15 when it describes that a man do not "hide" a lamp. And it's also the root word from which we get Apocalypto or Apocalypse which describes the revealing of Jesus, and revelation. For the hidden to be revealed. Anyway, I thought that was interesting and worth sharing haha!
I like the simplicity of your drawings of natural and organic life, and how each of these pictures is a focused glimpse.
Thank you, Nolan! You always give such good feedback. Glad you loved the sketches. It is interesting what you discovered about the word Calyptos and how it applies to the Eucalyptus tree. That is awesome. Makes the tree sound very mysterious. ;)
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