Drawing Snapshot + Timelapse - Sleepy Strawberry Hedgehog (Patreon)

Hello lovelies,

Earlier in the month I drew the illustration you voted for in my July poll, which was 'a hedgehog sleeping in a strawberry plant', but I didn't like it so I drew it again!

Here is the first version that I drew:

And here is the new version:

There are a few reasons that I didn't like the first one and a few lessons learned:

The hedgehog doesn't have enough character for me, so they don't feel very warm.

I drew it in a bit of a rush because I was trying to film it at the same time, which means that I didn't stop and spend enough time reviewing what I was doing as I drew it.

I didn't spend enough time on the sketch, which meant that I didn't try out different composition and character options.

But just because I didn't like it the first time doesn't mean that it's time wasted! I tried out a few new things like the border shape, and I found out what I didn't like which helped me draw something better the second time around.

So here is a little breakdown of how I drew this sleepy hedgehog and the base colour palette that I used (which I'll attach below if you'd like to use it in your own illustrations):

First I drew a simple composition. I thought it would be cute for the hedgehog to be a little bit curled up with their feet sticking out so I drew that first and built some leaves and flowers around them.

Then I made the sketch layer about 30% opacity so that I would easily be able to see through it.

On new layers below, I coloured in all of the main shapes, mostly keeping different elements on their own layers.

Then I gave everything a basic pass of texture, mostly using my Soft Crayon and Textured Pencil brushes.

Next, I drew in lots of little details like lines on the leaves and yellow spots on the strawberries.

I added some more texture and shading to everything, and then it was finished!

I've added a timelapse of the illustration process above if you'd like to see it all come together 🥰🦔🍓

If you're a Beautiful Bluebell then you can download this illustration as a digital print from yesterday's post.

💖