Drawing Big

Open up to new ways of seeing by Drawing Big.  Often, when people are first getting started with drawing they tend to place whatever they are drawing very small in the center of the page.  Today we are going to do the exact opposite to that.

In the same way you can zoom-in with a camera to get a close-up shot, you can zoom-in with your eyes to create a drawing of an object that takes up the entire page.  A flower is the subject used in these instructions, but it can be anything; a leaf, a pineapple, a face or a portion of a face, a horse – anything you want to experiment with.

Materials needed:
A  multipurpose paper like Stonehenge or a watercolor paper
graphite pencils (H and 2B)
kneaded erasers
watercolor and watercolor pencils or prismacolor pencils.
paper towel for drying brushes as you work.

Getting Started:
Look at Georgia O’Keefe’s work.  Her flower paintings are big and bold.
Decide what you’d like to draw.  Best to use a real object not a photo for this project.  If you do use a photo be sure it isn’t a close-up – that way you’ll have to change the composition of the photo for your drawing.
Lay out your materials and place the object right in front of your drawing area.

Let’s Create:
Close one eye and use your fingers to create a rectangle to look through with your other eye.  It’s like you’re looking through the viewfinder of a camera.  As you look at the flower like this, decide if you want to draw just a portion of the flower or the whole flower.  This should help you see how to cover up the whole page with the flower.

Now quickly sketch out the flower or part of the flower, being sure your flower comes to the edge of all sides of your paper.

Once you’ve got your composition down, then start working back into your drawing with color, using  watercolor and colored pencils.

Notice where the dark and light values are and any changes in the color or hue of the different parts of the flower.  Experiment with painting with a wet brush and putting more color down on an area that’s already wet.   Notice how the colors flow together, creating a soft, blended effect.

Also experiment with a dry brush.  Wait for the colors on the paper to dry before apply a new line or color with the dry brush.  Notice how painting with a dry brush on a dry area you can get a hard edge.

In this stage of Missy’s Sunflower you can see she experimented with wet on wet on the bottom petals and with dry brush on the other petals.

You can use either watercolor pencils or colored pencils to work out details.  The watercolor pencils will be effected by the addition of water, whereas regular oil-based colored pencils, like prismacolor, will remain more permanently.

Here’s a close-up drawing I did of a lotus.

The background, though always a consideration, is much less so in a close-up drawing.