I’d never been able to sketch this hydrangea plant before because once the teensy little buds open they shed piles of equally teensy little petals and make a big mess. But this one was so fresh I was able to cut and draw it without the mess. (Although it did end up making a mess anyway when my cat ate one of the leaves and then delivered it later to the rug.)
The cue was to draw a flashlight. My favorite flashlight is my wonderful L.L. Bean Pathfinder Cap. It has two LED lights in the brim. One points straight down and is perfect for lighting your sketchbook when painting when it’s dark, and the other points ahead to light your path. You just squeeze a spot on the brim and it toggles between down, ahead or both. When painting in a dark pub it perfectly lit my sketchbook page but nobody could tell where the light was coming from. Someone came over to try to figure it out because it just looked like my page was illuminated.
The hat is sitting on a plaster “Planes of the Head” cast, a tool for learning how to really see and draw heads (good article about this here).
Although I wasn’t a faithful follower of “Sketch Every Day in May,” it reinforced how much I enjoy drawing. Some of the cues sounded boring but I discovered that no matter how dull a subject may seem, drawing it rarely is.
Jana Bouc, Artist 