"This woman was drawing plants by first tracing their shadow on her drawing paper. Cool idea!"

Shadow Drawing: How it's done.

All my drawings begin in the field by tracing the outline of a shadow onto my drawing paper. I draw quickly, as the sun is moving fast across the sky.

Once the intitial sketch is complete, I return to the studio and let my imagination take over. I am not concerned with botanical accuracy, as mine is an interpretive art.

In the above photo, I gently placed my drawing board directly on top of the foliage. But normally, I use a modified tripod mounted with a drawing board that I raise or lower under the plant as needed.

Shadow drawing in progress: Firecracker Penstemon (Penstemon eatonii).

Pamela Burgess

photo and caption: Mark Frauenfelder, dinosaursandrobots.com - a blog