“Budding Oranges,” Pencil, June 13, 2024

In this assignment, we were to find a plant life interesting to us. We were to focus our attention on the shapes, sizes, patterns, textures and groupings of the plant life and draw what we see. We were to notice how the light falls on objects such as twigs and limbs unevenly, leaving some details in darkness and others fully illuminated and to take note of the shapes produced by the shadows on overlapping leaves or branches. We were to experiment with different componsition framings using a viewfinder.

I chose a snippet from my orange tree of budding oranges in June. Typically these oranges are not ready for eating until late December and in the summer they look like key limes. I love “new growth” in plants and also I liked how all the leaves in the snippet were different sizes, on different diagonals, and some forshortened. I tried to have a decent composition like I saw in “Beautiful Botanicals” - trying to avoid tangents, converging lines, and even spacing.

I spent ~3hrs on “Budding Oranges.”