Acanthus Leaf #3- Forming the leaf part II

Now that we've got the basic structure of the leaf and the position of the eyelets, it's time to form the lobes of the leaf. As I mentioned in the last post, the convention is for the lower lobes to overlap the one above. Here's how we do that.

Step Eight: Aligned with each of the eyelets that you drew in the last step make a circle that touches the edge of the leaf, and that has a center about parallel with the eyelet. As usual, these are only guides that will disappear in a few steps, so draw these lightly!
As you can see, I only drew one side of the leaf. That's because from this step on I will be folding the paper in half to do the other side of it, to avoid having to erase quite as much. For now, just leave it as it is here- one half only drawn in with the circles.

Step Nine: What we will be drawing here are the central veins of the lobes, which in ornamental language are usually represented by a crease in the leaf. The tip of each crease starts at the point on the perimeter of the leaf that is halfway between each of the eyes, represented here by where the horizontal dotted lines cross the outside profile. They then curve and taper downwards, where they will all flow into the gully that defines the side of the central rib of the leaf. Notice that each of the creases passes through the center point of each of the circles and passes just above the eyelet of the next lobe down.

Step Ten: We now begin to define the individual lobes of the leaf, starting at the bottom and progressing upwards. Each lobe begins at the eyelet (as we practiced on the last lesson), curves upward around the circumference of the circle, and comes to a point at the end of the crease. It then returns downwards around the outside of the circle to die under the top edge of the leaf below it. 

Step Eleven: Here I have erased the circles used as guides so that you can see more clearly the shape of the lobes

Step Eleven: By folding the paper in half vertically and tracing the design, I have duplicated the lobes onto the other side of the leaf (without going through the whole process of circles and creases.) I also erased the last bit of the crease near the tip of the lobes, an aspect that will be further explored when we talk about styles and leaf types. You should still be drawing lightly, as even now we will be erasing much of this before we are done.

The other trick you can use in the sequence of these steps is to flip the paper and trace from the other side each time  you make a new step, that way you can completely erase the step before without erasing the current drawing. This is easiest with vellum, but you can also hold regular paper up to a window or a light box so that you can see through it.

Step Twelve: Subdividing the lobes gives the acanthus leaf its individual character, and also allows us to take guesses as to where and when an example might be found historically. There are many ways of doing this, but I've attempted here to distill what is common to most of them, so that we may use it in this lesson.

First up, a note on the particular style that I'm using in this example. The curve on the left side of this illustration is what might be called an ogival arch (especially if my Illustrator skills were better!) That  is, it has two "s" curves meeting at a point in the middle. To me this is a nod to the natural form of the acanthus, which has sharp spines at the tips of its leaves, so I will use it for our lesson.

Secondly, as seen in the illustration at right, the lobes are roughly symmetrical over the axis of the central crease, so when subdividing we will arrange 3 circles to fit inside the lobe, using the perpendicular axis to the crease as the base of the triangle formed by the 3 circles (Just look at the illustration- don't try to make sense of it verbally!) As usual, these are only guides, so draw lightly!!

Here is the method seen above as applied to the lobes of the right side (we can do the same method of advancing one side and tracing it to the other side again.)

Step Thirteen: Following the same method we used for the general lobe shape, we create leaflets that follow the outlines of the three enclosed circles, noting that the notches formed between the leaflets should make a more or less perpendicular line to the central crease (see illustration two below this one)

Step Fourteen: Removed the guide circles (and replaced the center creases that I accidentally took out of the last illustration!)

Step Fifteen: Illustrating  the small eyelets separating the leaflets and how they are perpendicular to the central crease of the lobe. Also notice how the central rib of the whole leaf has been added, and how the creases and folds of the eyelets all spring from the same channels on both sides.

The further subdivision of the lobes gets less orderly from this point on, with more asymmetry visible. Nevertheless, the tips of each leaflet and its divisions still follow an arrow-like form proceeding from the central rib and channels of the leaf. I will go deeper into style and variants on the form in the next post.