My Process: Drawing from Life

The photo at the left, taken with a camera phone in my studio, shows my process for arriving at the leaf images on the left side of the panel. The piece is called "Sycamore", and the leaves in the right side of the photo were collected from the grounds of Huntington Park on Nob Hill, in my hometown of San Francisco. I taped those leaves onto a piece of mat board, and then carefully drew them on the panel. This enabled me to do the composition ahead of time, and allowed me to draw directly from life, which I really enjoy. This also spared me having to draw them first on tracing paper, and then transfer them to the wood, as you see in earlier blog postings. Once the drawing was done, I carved out the area inside the drawing, using hand gouges and chisels. The next step after this is to paint the carved area with a warm Burnt Sienna acrylic color, and to finalize the patterns and shapes on the remaining parts of the panel. Using an earth tone for creating the positive shape of the leaves is a departure for me, as I usually use black and graphite. The finished piece should look really sharp!

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