Want to learn to draw a leaf? Here’s how to get started.

In the hope that you may like to try a drawing of your own, I want to share a 2 techniques that I employ in my work: bounding boxes and observational drawing. These are foundational drawing techniques that can be used to achieve realism and accuracy in your work.

I’m going to use leaves to demonstrate how to use a bounding box, and how to observe closely. In so doing, I will show you a 4 step process that you can follow to draw a leaf of your own.

Teaching field sketching and drawing plants

Back in early November, a full 3 months ago, I received an email from a PhD candidate at York University. She would be teaching an Introduction to Natural History class in the winter term and she invited me to give a presentation on natural science illustration, and to provide her class with drawing instruction so they would be able to record some plants at a greenhouse on campus.

Floral drawings from Cuba - Santa Maria

Mr. P and I decided on an impromptu holiday in June. We slipped off down to Santa Maria, Cuba for a week.

The Beaver Dam

It started out with an impulse to paint a beaver lodge from last year's canoe trip to Killarney. That impulse played out fairly well. See Exhibit A.

Exhibit A: The Beaver Lodge

Dome-shelled Galapagos Tortoise

After completing the marine iguana as my final project for NHI101x, I was inspired to keep up the Galapagos theme. I chose to do a tortoise in graphite, given I was getting comfortable with it as a medium. Again.