Sunday, November 3, 2013

Drawing Mushrooms

In all my years of public school art, I don't know why it never occurred to me that one can actually learn to draw. I understood that people could learn to play an instrument, very few people who are proficient on the piano had their start like Mozart, but for some reason, I had it in my head that if one doesn't have the natural talent to put what one sees on paper, one could never do it.

Then, playing on Pinterest a couple months ago, I stumbled across a "How to Draw Portraits" tutorial. That day happened to be one of those rare days when I didn't have a crush of other responsibilities weighing on me, so I thought portraits sounded like fun and I followed the tutorial.

Wow, it actually looked like a woman. So I did a few more portraits and with each was able to capture more and more of the likeness of the person I was drawing.


But portraits take hours. And I don't often have hours to spend doodling so the sketch pad got put up  (yes, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought myself a sketch pad and a set of drawing pencils and smudging tools).

I was feeling the urge to draw yesterday and decided to play on Pinterest again for inspiration. There are so many drawing tutorials pinned one could learn anything from drawing water droplets to dragons. I came across a tutorial for mushrooms. Mushrooms, what a perfect idea. They are pretty and small and there are so many species, I could draw mushrooms for years and never run out of varieties.


This is my rendition of the mushrooms from the tutorial. Then I did an image search and picked some different mushrooms. I liked the spots on these and how one was open wide while the other was still opening.


Last night, my mom suggested I try a chanterelle. That was hard. The image I chose was more of the (false) gills than of the "cap". I use the ( ) and " " since chanterelles have neither real gills nor a cap.


Maybe I'll pick a better chanterelle image if I have time this afternoon. Off to milk. We may have gained an hour last night, but the goats don't have a clock. Have a blessed Sunday, everyone!

5 comments:

  1. Wow, that's a really good drawing of the girl. And the mushrooms. You do have a talent there. It's always fun to see what else we can do. I hope you keep this up. I know Hobby Lobby gives lessons, but you seems to be doing pretty good on your own.

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  2. You are doing good, I learned to draw and paint over 20 years ago, you have probably heard this but the key is to develop switching your brain from left to right side. A natural art genius is most likely already on the right side but probably can't do math or logic very well. If you paint from a photo, turn it upside down, this will drive your left brain to give up and allow your right to take over.

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    1. I wonder if my being left handed makes a difference. I've seen some of your work on your blog. I'm in awe!

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    2. I have heard that it helps to be a lefty, my daughter is and she is good at seeing like an artist. She pitches with her right hand so she can switch sides I guess. I took me awhile to be able to switch but now it is natural to switch sides without tricking myself into it. I think that I started taking better photos when I was able to be in right mode. It helped when designing programs when I was in the software field, I could see possibilities easier.

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  3. Those look really great!! I was surprised by that myself in Art School, I know my talent isn't with fine art but given practice and some direction I could make it resemble something lol
    I still can't draw a straight line though! lol

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