How to Draw Foliage with Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is a fancy art term for the play of light and dark in a drawing or painting. That means instead of outlining the crown of a tree, we're going to draw it in scribbly and make it look three dimensional by using chiaroscuro. Drawing foliage with chiaroscuro is not as hard as it sounds!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 12 color set of colored Conte crayons
• Sketchbook or drawing paper
• HB or H graphite pencil
• Kneaded eraser
• Workable matte fixative
• Cotton swabs

1. 
   Sky area lightly sketched

   Sketch some sky color in lightly, using the lighter bright blue in the set. Make up some shapes that will become tree crowns and draw around them. Copy mine for some ideas, but don't worry if you put a "sky hole" somewhere different from where I have. This picture will look like trees on a sunny day.

2. 
   Highlights of trees sketched and smudged, sky smudged smooth

   Smudge the sky area with your fingers or cotton swabs till it's completely smooth. Don't worry about the edges, let those vignette off, don't go all the way to the edge of the paper. Add a little more color if vigorous scrubbing doesn't make the sky a smooth even tone, especially in the areas where it's lightest. Go darkest at the top of the sky and lighter down near the ground. Use strokes that angle in the same direction as the first strokes, lower left toward upper right.
   
   Now using the bright yellow-green, sketch in what will become the highlights on the masses of foliage. Put them to the upper right on all the foliage areas. Make up some forward foliage tufts by adding some curving shapes in yellow-green in big blank areas. But make sure there is yellow-green on everything that has an edge to the right or the top, except the tree trunk. We will do that later by mixing black, white and brown.
   
   Smudge the highlights. It's okay if they move a little bit into the areas you'll put middle color and shadow colors. This is going to look good when it's finished.

3. 
   Shadows of trees smudged in, mid tones established

   We are building some basic areas of color like a paint by number painting, but with blurrier edges. Scribble in all of the darker areas of the foliage with the darker bright green, so there is two-tone foliage. Smudge the darker areas. It should be starting to look a little three dimensional.
   
   Where darker green is blended over the lighter green sometimes it mixes to a shade in between. Let that happen where it does. Put some more light green over the dark green to make the mixture happen as a middle area on the foliage so that now you have light, medium and dark green shapes.

4. 
   Chiaroscuro established in foliage

   If these were background trees, we might even keep them like this -- rounded but blurry and soft, with very bright colors suitable for a children's book illustration. The highlights create some shapes because they show the light's coming from off the page to the right and above. But we want some darker shadows now, and also to use deliberate strokes to add texture to the foliage. Shade into the darks a little with brown, to take down the overwhelming brightness of the green. Sketch the tree trunks in black, going lightly and doing outlines and occasional loose lines in between. Make sure they trail off into roots at the bottom. Add a few more bushes in other colors, maybe a tan and brown bush would be cool with a little green in it. We can add a little red into the shadows too, sketching right over the green.
   
   This makes a rich, vibrant brown down in the darks under the leaves. Let's add a little orange to some of the highlight edges, since that brown bush looks like it's changing color in early autumn. Maybe one of the big trees is thinking about turning too, with some yellow and orange details just at the edges in the highlights.
   
   Dot and scribble these new details in, mostly dotting with short jabbing strokes. This is where it's starting to develop a leafy texture over the smooth underlayer we did before. Chiaroscuro is more interesting when patterns of light go right up over dark and patterns of dark chunk right into the light areas.
   
   Use black lightly to add some branches showing through the trees. Fork them. Have them come right up out of a leafy chunk and vanish into the one above it. Branches don't usually show in total on trees, the crown comes down lower than that.
   
   Some brambles sketched in brown look nice down at the horizon and we'll dash just a few dark blue marks into the deepest shadows in the foliage. The trees look good!

5. 
   Chiaroscuro, complete, showing loose edges

   Now to finish up the picture, let's use white over the black lightly to finish up the tree trunks. Use golden tan instead of bright green to sketch some grass texture -- long grass texture, like uncut dried long grass. Then add in light and dark green strokes over it once it's smudged. Don't worry about occasional darker smudges from carrying black from the tree roots. They just show some shadows of hills and rises under the grass. Add a few red and orange wildflowers in the tall weeds. Keep the direction of all the grasses going lower left to a little higher to the right -- to imply a wind or breeze blowing steadily from the left. This gives motion to the painting, having most of the marks going in that direction.
   
   A few white strokes over the light green to highlight turns into lighter light green, and looks great in the foliage.
   
   Add a few brown grass stems to pick out details. Put them in clumps, not evenly spaced. Go hardest at the start of the stroke and flick them in the direction of the wind, lower left to upper right. Sign in the lower right with initials or your signature.
   
   Spray with workable matte fixative and it's done -- a beautiful three dimensional picture of an autumn day that makes strong use of chiaroscuro, contrasting light and dark in the foliage. You can mat to bring the edges in completely past the blurry part, or "float" the drawing in front of a solid mat by using double-sided archival photo tabs to attach it. I'll show it both ways here and at the beginning to let you decide how to mount yours.
   
   Happy drawing!

Tips & Warnings

• Mix colors optically. Complements can jazz up a picture even in areas that are the exact opposite of what those colors are supposed to be. Red in the green shadows of the foliage still looks mostly like darker green, but it's lively.
• Smudge a base layer, then add small distinct strokes to establish texture.
• After trying this method, go out in the yard or go to a park to sketch real trees using chiaroscuro. Pay attention to the shapes of clumps of leaves instead of looking at individual leaves, and sketch without trying to get them perfectly. You may surprise yourself with how accurate your drawings become!
• If an area gets too dark after spraying fixative, just add a few more highlight strokes to brighten it up.
• Avoid lollipop trees. Make the shapes of the foliage odd and interesting, leaving sky holes sometimes and branches crossing sky holes.
• Always use workable fixative in areas with adequate ventilation. Fumes can be dangerous. They smell bad, too. So crack a window or turn the AC up, or better still, spray fixative outdoors or on a screened porch.

Resources

• Dick Blick for information on art supplies as well as purchase online