There is something about fig leaves shortly after they come out in the spring. They are so…. new. They are thick, heavily veined and, when the light strikes them in just the right way, so interesting to look at, for me at least.

Here is a photograph of one taken shortly after noon, just the other day.

Fig Leaf

But this is what inspired me:

I took a similar picture the other day, in the morning, when a spot of light was illuminating another fig leaf.

Today’s experiment:

First try

I started out today’s work by trying to reproduce, with a single line the highways and byways of the leaf. My vision of the completed work – an intricate mosaic of angular twists, dead ends, switch backs and other meanderings I saw on the leaf – was so vivid, that I began started drawing in ink.

It didn’t work out.  Then I remembered Paul Klee‘s quotation: “Art is not about reproducing the visible, but rather, to make visible.”

Second attempt

I began the second time by ‘taking my line for a walk’, another description by the great Klee, of the process of drawing. I trotted my line here and there, trying to remember some of the shapes formed by the veins in the leaves.

Fig Leaf Inspiration
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block