Finally got this to upload...

On the left page I sketched out my friend's hookah in pencil while we were sitting there. Now that I'm looking for art subjects that are more 3-D it really stood out as an interesting shape. The blue grey marker bled through from the opposite side so I planned the two pages around that. On the right page I have some doodles and a sketch of a nose I did while I was falling asleep. Then on top I taped in one of the pages from the book below and a scrap of paper that i had written on and then accidentally gotten wet and I liked the color with the other things on the page, and how its form mirrors the picture of the wood a bit.

 I looked at this book http://books.google.com/books/about/Abstraction_in_art_and_nature.html?id=__7pAAAAMAAJ that I've had checked out from the library for a while. These two pages in particular, pg. 172 and 131. In the left sketchbook page I wrote down what the book identified as the key characteristics of the leaf that are visually important. 

 

All of the leaf exploration related to the project for my 3-D class. 

The picture below shows what the wire pieces looked like while I was knitting them. These pieces really defined the structure of the final leaf. I focused on the twists and turns and transitions from one sharp angle to the next. I think the shadow adds an interesting element to the sculpture, but I'm not good at photographing things so the piece looks better in real life.

 

Sketches

I was trying to understand the different sections of the leaf I found and break down the way that they merge together. There is an interesting twist in the veins and the folds of the leaf are the most interesting part of the whole structure. I like line drawings a lot but these were looser than I would probably normally do. But this is pretty much how I would think of translating it into wire at first glance.