I really need help drawing plants. How do I even indicate that there's grass and leaves?

by Zoie, January 25th 2025 © 2025 Zoie
Done as part of a practice session with poses of 5 minutes in length. My current goal is: Reduce stiffness and make my drawings feel more dynamic, energetic, fluid
LULF
In fact, it can be seen that you have drawn the outlines of grass and trees. In the simplest way, you can use a pencil to lay out the colors on a large scale. The plants used as the background are relatively dark and do not require too many details to showcase their characteristics.
Zoie
Actually the reference picture was of a beach and I think some trees in the background. And I don't think there's any grass lol.
LULF
Sorry, I mistakenly thought people were standing on a path in the grass and you mentioned grass and leaves in the title：）
Zoie
No worries! My title was actually referring to another drawing. I uploaded all of these at once. Now knowing that this is a beach, is there any easy way to indicate that there's sand and water?
LULF
I'm sorry, but I have some images but I can't upload them to show you. So I'll try to describe it to you by dictation. First of all, you can distinguish between the sea and the beach by simple black and white. For example, "the beach is white and the sea is black", or "the beach is black and the sea is white". In the case of "the beach is black, the sea is white", a large number of thick and black lines are horizontally superimposed and spread in the direction of the beach, and it is not necessary to spread it very densely and darkly, but to naturally reveal the white of the paper (according to the undulating shape of the beach), so that the beach can be expressed. At this time, the sea has been expressed through white space, you can also lay some light lines to express the waves (not too much, light colors are fine, just follow the direction of the wave movement), if you use the nail head rat tail line, then a few thick lines can show the feeling of the waves.
Hope that helps you :))Hopefully the translator has no translation errors.

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