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I was able to try another sketch during a few minutes of free time just before dinner. The subject was a paper birch leaf stolen from an obliging tree in our front yard. My sister gave me a sketch notebook, a few fancy artist pencils, and an archive pen, all an improvement over my previous tools.
paper birch leaf sketch alongside original
As I have mentioned, a major advantage of sketching is it forces you to become more familiar with the smaller details of the subject. Also, sketching is different from photography in that one can, and must, exercise a lot more liberty as far as what details are recorded, and how they are emphasized. Precise accuracy must be abandoned, in favor of general shapes and forms, as it is simply too difficult and time consuming to reproduce exactly what is seen.
An interesting feature of the paper birch leaf is the V-shaped veins which branch off in parallel to each other from the main center vein. These veins do not themselves diminish or fork out, but each of them continue to a large, distinctively shaped tooth along the edge of the leaf. On the real leaf, you can see that there are smaller veins branching off from each of the those veins, at a similar angle of departure. An elegant design, artistic while providing both required structural integrity and pathways for nutrients. As always, all praise goes to the Creator and Engineer of this marvelous little system.
This work © 2024 by Christopher Howard is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
