Did you know, that if you can become a better artist, you will also strengthen your skills as a naturalist? Our Naturalist Bridget Butler explains why, and also gives us a sketching lesson!
"I never thought of myself as an artist, but as a naturalist, I learned a couple of tricks so that I could do field sketches. Let's try one. We've got an oak leaf in front of us, and I want you to put your pencil down on the paper, look at the oak leaf, and just start drawing it, You can't peek at your paper, but you're just going to do something called a blind contour."
"This is kind of fun!"
"Try to get the outline."
"Oh I peeked!"
"Oh! No peeking!"
"Well, I don't know! I'm a little lopsided here!"
"Not bad! But that's what it's supposed to look like. So the next trick that we would do, would be to get to peek at your paper while you draw. And then the next exercise would be to try to look at the leaf and draw it in only 30 seconds, kind of like a bird flying away really quick. And then the final time, you get to spend as much time as you want, you can look at the paper, and you can look at the leaf."
"Why is it important to learn how to draw?"
"Well, you know there are a lot of different artists out there, including James Audubon who is probably one of the most famous artists? And I think what he learned, and what we can learn from sketching, is how to look at things very specifically, for details. And that helps a lot when you are trying to identify something like this leaf. The more you can look at the different parts of it, it will help you when you go to that field guide to decide what kind of leaf that is, and what tree it came from."
"It really is kind of fun!"
