Molly Skouson, VISTA service member
Grinnell College Museum of Art
Right: Joseph Mulder after Maria Sibylla Merian, The Metamorphoses of the Insects of Surinam
About Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 –1717) was an artist and naturalist who used paintings and engravings to record her observations of caterpillars, butterflies, and the plants they lived on. She started studying caterpillars when she was 13, and is credited with discovering the process of metamorphosis, which was a radical idea at the time. Her artwork is so detailed and accurate that scientists can identify the exact species she painted, even hundreds of years later.
When you look at her artwork, what stands out to you first? Do the insects and plants remind you of anything you’ve seen? Notice how much detail Merian used. You can see every spot on the butterflies’ wings!
About Pamela Crockett
Visible Strings is from Pamela Crockett’s project Dance of Decay, one of the artworks in GCMoA’s virtual exhibition, Nature, Made. To make her Dance of Decay paintings, Crockett dissects natural decaying objects and looks at them with a magnifying glass. Because she looks so closely and carefully, she can capture the tiniest details and shades of color. For this painting, she looked closely at two Magnolia seed pods to understand how they expel their seeds.
What is your favorite part of Visible Strings? Can you imagine the seeds emerging from the pod? What colors did Crockett use in her painting? Do you notice any small details?
Pick the object you want to draw.
You could draw an insect, a flower, a leaf, a piece of fruit, or anything else you think looks interesting.
Let yourself delight in the beauty of nature. Touch your object to see how it feels. You might even smell it. Take plenty of time to look at your object during every step of your drawing. The most important part of drawing from observation is observation!
Draw the shapes.
What shape is your object? Do you see any circles or ovals? How about squares, rectangles, or triangles?
Draw the shapes you see.
Use a pencil and draw with light lines at first. You can put down lots of sketchy lines to start, and then emphasize lines you want to keep, and eliminate lines that don’t work as well.
Right: Pencil drawing of the biggest lines in a fern frond
Add details.
Find as many details as you can fit in your artwork. You can always find more if you look closely.
What patterns does your object have? Dots? Straight lines? Curved lines?
Add the patterns you see to your artwork, plus any shapes you didn’t add before.
Right: Detailed pencil drawing of a fern frond
Add colors.
What colors is your object? Are they light colors? Dark colors? Bright colors? A mix of colors and shades?
Add the colors to your artwork using markers, colored pencils, or paint.
Why draw from observation?
Drawing from observation is an important foundation for other art techniques, like gestural drawing. It also has applications in other disciplines: it helps us learn about nature (or whatever we’re drawing), improves hand-eye coordination, and teaches us to see what’s really there instead of what we think we should see.
The more you practice close observation, the more you will see! The more you practice drawing, the better you will get!
Web support:
Daniel Strong
Associate Director and Curator of Exhibitions
Grinnell College Museum of Art
and
Rick Johnson
Student Assistant
Grinnell College Museum of Art