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The problem with using a field guide from 1982 is that sometimes, species names have changed. Since I’m away from home for several days, I scribbled the common names of the trees I’ll be drawing this week in my journal so I wouldn’t have to bring the field guide along. Then I looked up today’s tree, Torrey vauquelinia, and I couldn’t find any such thing online. There are a lot of trees named after John Torrey, but most, if not all, are conifers. If I had the field guide with me, I could check the scientific name, or look up other common names and the description, and probably find the corresponding tree online.
Since I don’t have the book, I mentioned my problem on Facebook, and two friends who love doing research dove right in. Aleks’s best guess is this: Vauquelinia californica, common name Arizona rosewood. Why is Arizona in the common name and California in the scientific name? What happened to the John Torrey connection? Is this the tree that appears next in my field guide? Some of these questions may be answered soon. In the meantime, it is a leaf, and I drew it, and that’s the most important thing.
An experiment in simplicity. I used only three tones: one dark, one light, and the unmarked paper. I think it’s very expressive, in spite of or because of this limitation.
I took a break from this one (MacKenzie willow) about 2/3 of the way through, then liked it so much when I opened my sketchbook again that I didn’t add another mark. Nor did I look back at the reference photo to see what I was leaving out by stopping. I like the spirit of it, and isn’t that the aim?
And here is yesterday’s leaf, from a peach tree.
Criss-crossed by shadows, this bonplandiana leaf, of all the ones I saw online, said “draw me.”
This willow goes by many names: Pacific willow in my field guide, but also red, whiplash, and shining willow (the translation of the scientific name). What I’ve drawn here is not a leaf, strictly speaking, but a stipule: a little quasi-leaf that grows at the junction of a twig and the stem of a leaf. And the ones on S. lucida are fuzzy and shiny, which is more than I care to try to get across in my drawing tonight. It’s been a pleasant, but long and full, day, and one steeped in art. Earlier, I drew a copy of a self-portrait from one of Cezanne’s sketchbooks, and a clandestine portrait of an old man on the bus.
Drawing six leaves takes six times as long, but sometimes I just can’t resist the shape of a whole twig of them falling like this. And I’m on vacation.
Tomorrow we go to the Art Institute of Chicago, the home of so many works of art that I have seen only in tiny little reproductions in books. Hopper, Cassatt, Seurat, Monet. So much inspiration in one building!
Sermons in Stones 
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