Patterns in Nature: Research.

I have eventually gotten round to taking some photos of my sketchbook work so thought it was about time to post some of it on my blog.It took me quite a while deciding on what to do for this project. What kind of natural pattern I would branch off into. Branch being the important word here, I finally decided on trees. In my drawings I tried to portray a sense of pattern within the shapes and textures found in trees. Here us a little sample of some pieces of work:

In this piece I have focused on the shape of the tree and drawn it using masking tape. I then put a light wash of watercolour over the page and removed the masking tape. Last of all I added some more detail to highlight the shape using brown ink and a dip pen.

I have concentrated on the texture in this particular piece. Even though you can't see it very well I have layered masking tape to create lots of texture. I believe this worked quite well but next time I'd use more masking tape to give it a more 3d effect.

In this piece I tried to recreate the image thats stuck on the left sketchbook page. I first put down a ground by rubbing in small flakes of charcoal with some newsprint. Then I stuck down some ripped up pieces of masking tape and painted over them with some white and cream coloured paint. And after I pulled off the masking tape I was left with the effect shown in the photo above.

In this sketchbook page I first put down a painted background, then I did a left hand drawing on top using black ink and a dip pen. When I closed my sketchbook I also managed to get a mirror image printed onto the opposite page.

For this piece I applied paint using a small plastic spatula, I really liked the effect it created and the paint also dried quicker than usual which was a plus. On top of it i drew the shapes made by branches of a tree using a fine liner pen.