Looking closely and drawing
Art & Design · Early Years · The School
Look first
Before drawing something, look at it for a whole minute without picking up a pencil. Turn it round. Look underneath. A leaf has veins and a stalk and edges that are not smooth. Most people draw before they have really looked, and it shows.
Small details
Close looking finds things you did not know were there — a crack, a spot, a bump, a change of colour, a bit that is not quite symmetrical. Those details are what make a drawing look like THAT leaf rather than any leaf. Adding one or two of them changes a drawing completely.
What you see, not what you remember
Most people draw a remembered idea instead of the real thing — a flower as a circle with petals round it, even when the flower in front of them looks nothing like that. Keep glancing back at the object while you draw. Looking more than you draw is the whole trick.
First, put a leaf in your pocket and draw a leaf from memory: it will come out as a pointed oval with a line down the middle. Now take the real leaf out and draw it while LOOKING, spending far more time on the leaf than the paper. This one has a nibbled edge, a torn corner, veins that branch unevenly, and a brown spot. Put the two drawings side by side — the difference is looking.