Nature Sketches

After doing the ink drawings in the previous post I made a spider diagram to help me decide more specifically what to do my self directed project on. I then wrote my project proposal and decided to mainly focus on nature and man made structures. I then went back through my photos from Japan and started to make some initial drawings of nature I’d taken photos of. This was helpful in generating ideas. I mainly drew from photos I’d taken in a temple garden, where there were signs for the names of each of the different plants. The only problem I found was that because of the time of year I went a lot of the flowers and plants looked quite dead. I want to research some more plants featured in temple gardens so I can draw more of a variety.
I think the overlapping drawings in coloured pencil are the most effective. I think creating a relationship between the plants and overlapping them creates more of a garden feel. I also tried out some drawings with ink since I recently learnt some new techniques and am really enjoying the medium. I think the combination of blind drawing in coloured pencil and A silhouette in ink is very effective because ink is a less rigid medium so it gives the drawing a natural feel, and the addiction of the coloured pencil allows some of the detail of the flower to be shown. I definitely want to keep experimenting with combining coloured pencil and ink, but with more varieties of flowers. Also since the project is about Japan I want to figure out how to make the subject more obviously Japanese.