How to Draw Plants

On First Practice
Sketching from Nature
On Color and Composition

SKETCHING FROM NATURE

[This shoot of Spanish chestnut was drawn by Ruskin at Carrara; the original drawing, here reproduced, was given at vol. i. p. 121 of W. G. Collingwood's Life and Work of John Ruskin (1893), under the incorrect title "Olive at Carrara." The drawing (now in the collection of Mr. T. F. Taylor) was shown at the Ruskin Exhibition, Manchester (1904), No. 114, and is here reproduced. Ruskin had intended to contrast his sketch with one of Harding's and to add further illustrations, as appears from the passage (cancelled when the intended illustrations were withdrawn) in the proof-sheets, which reads thus: —
" . . . its unity of growth with its companions in the radiating group. Let us take an instance. Plate 19, in this work of Harding's [Lesson. on Trees], is a sketch of a Spanish chestnut, and on the right-hand side, a dark bough of it comes against the sky. The formal habit of the hand, brought into the beat possible application to the character of chestnut foliage, results in conditions which, though they of course look better in the soft color of the chalk than in the black of the woodcut, present in reality no truer profiles against the sky than those in Fig. . Now, here is a spray of real Spanish chestnut, thrown in similarly black profile against the white paper. (It may perhaps add a little to the interest the reader takes in it, if I tell him that it is not a bit of Greenwich Park chestnut, but of one growing, 1 doubt not to this (lay, on a projecting crag of sculptors' marble at Massa Carrara.) I have not taken particular pains in drawing it: but I think the reader will feel in a moment that, though there are indeed radiating lines governing the groups, there are other lines, by no means radiating, but wilful and wild, mingling with them continually. And this is just as true of every other tree as it is of chestnut, nor of every tree only but of every herb that grows. It does not matter how formal their arrangement of foliage may at first appear, no regular method of execution will ex- press it. Take a spray of cross-wort madder, for instance, Fig. . Legal enough it is, certainly, in the stated repetitions of its four crossed leaves, at regular distances on the stalk; yet you cannot express such a leaf as that, when seen a little way off, by any quick crossing touch of pen, as, for instance, b. The plant in no way resembles that; it is much more perfect and less regular; every one of its leaves is a little out of law — a little too short or too long, or turned too much down or too much up. And if he takes the pen - . "] It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster may be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one than b in Fig. 9, p. 72, nor a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish chestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 24;* but in either of them, even the general reader, unpractised in any of the previously recommended exercises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of these examples, he will find that neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it; but that he must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point of a leaf here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully through this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really can see and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9 nor Fig. 24, but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as Fig. 25.* * I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage in a woodcut.

Continue to Three Laws of Drawing

Get all the animals listed on this site in an easily printable format. BONUS: Also learn how to draw mice, monkeys, butterflies and a phoenix. Instant download. $3.95