How will your experiments with negative space help your observational drawing in the future?
Drawing negative space definitely helps to draw more realistic and natural shapes, and I think whenever I was attentive to negative space the drawing improved. But I’m still at the beginning and need much more practice. The main problem is to get the directions and lengths of the line segments correct. I think that currently I’m producing too many unconnected lines in a drawing and it’s a major challenge for me to identify the forms to which these line segments belong. There’s still much to work on for me.
What techniques did you use to ensure you drew your plants in proportion?
In the negative space exercise, I think I began with a rough outline and applied proportional estimations. I visually divide the plant in segments and try to transfer the segments correctly on the paper. But I corrected a lot. In the coloured pencil drawing, I used the same principle and chose a light brown to draw a first outline of all shapes to get them more or less correct. For the marker drawing, I sketched the outlines in light colours first and then just continued with any proportional error I made. For the wax crayon drawing, I drew a very light pencil sketch first, then colorized the drawing. The pen and ink drawing was made without an outline sketch and more with a focus on negative space. I think this worked because I was already very familiar with the plant I had chosen.
Basically it seems that I’m always using the same technique of visual estimation. I think this works quite well for the overall shape of my arrangement on the sheet, but it works less well with all the object details. I have numerous errors because the drawn leaves are not true to their actual proportions.
How did you achieve an effect of three-dimensional space in your drawings?
In the negative space drawing is only a minimum amount of three-dimensionality. I think it results from the leaves’ shapes which are distorted through the viewing perspective, but exactly this conveys the three-dimensionality. I also added some lines to clarify the shapes of stems and how leaves are attached to them, but these can be seen only from quite close.
In the potted plant drawings, three-dimensionality results from drawing the context of the plants like clay pot and the metal fence behind the pot. In the coloured pencil drawing, the three-dimensionality is quite successfully achieved through fine tonal gradings. Otherwise, the main technique I used was drawing overlapping elements, like leaves before or behind other leaves.