This buddha statue was partially overgrown by the box hedge, which led to the problem of how to represent the foliage without describing every leaf or drawing attention away from the main subject.

Following advice given in Barrington Barber’s The Complete Book of Drawing, only the leaves overlapping the shoulder were drawn with any detail, the others being abstracted into areas of light and shade. The theory is that one area of detail is enough to trick the brain into filling in the rest.