Saturday, May 31, 2008

Gesture Drawing

The first drawings I do of botanical subjects are gesture drawings. I place my pen or pencil on the page, and without looking at the page I follow the lines of the plant from bottom to top. Sometimes I run out of page before I run out of plant, so I'll draw it again until I have learned to fit the plant on my drawing sheet. I think some of the most lyrical and elegant drawings result from gesture drawings. One learns to really look at the subject, rather than assuming anything from past experience/culture.
This is an ink drawing of Chicory intybus, one of the few true blue wildflowers that grow in my region.

2 comments:

Judy Martin said...

I agree with you about your method of drawing giving the most lyrical results, Janet.

I've been wanting to ask you what you thought about Portland? It has a reputation of being the "greenest" city in the U.S. Did you notice this yourself?

Janet Rice-Bredin said...

Hi Judy!
I liked it very much. Portland is a green city for many reasons. There are gardens everywhere, even under overpasses. The Convention Center is a LEED building. The city has a large central area of downtown which has free Light Rail and streetcars, so they don't seem to have the traffic congestion like so many other cities.

The people were extremely friendly. During several conversations with young people who served us at stores and restaurants, we found out that most of them had come from somewhere else and settled in Portland. They wouldn't live anywhere else was the general comment.