My first thoughts were to strike out boldly into point world. It had worked well for the rosette, so why not for the Acanthus leaf?
So I set off merrily lofting away but almost immediately I was mired down in the difficulty of controlling so many independent variables. Degrees of freedom in embarrassing abundance. Paradoxically it slows you down. The exact opposite of freehand sketching. No intuitive flow.
Maybe I will try again at some point, But for now, getting a clearer idea of how to break down an Acanthus leaf into manageable pieces seemed to be a more pressing need.
So I started to sketch: rapidly but analytically, tracing over my previous efforts until some kind of direction started to emerge.
Premature attempts to jump back into modelling were not encouraging so I churned out a series of sketches and…