sketchbook ep 17 | buildings and landscapes🏡 (who am I??!!) | using a rainbow pencil🌈 | forget-me-nots 💙 | + some thoughts on perfectionism and acceptance (Patreon)

Hi friend!

It’s time for more sketchbook content and to finally show you April’s rewards.

But first, let me tell you something.

I’ve been sooo late with everything these past few weeks or maybe even months. It’s not even because I have too much on my plate. Not at all!

Honestly, I have a lot of things ALMOST finished but I underestimate the energy/time needed to actually complete something.

What’s the reason of that? Well, I didn’t mean to share it as I feels super lame – it might seem like an excuse. I’ve been struggling with severe anaemia for a couple of months.

It makes me feel tired all the time. The iron I’m taking to improve my health faster are making me nauseous, so yeah, I’m feeling (literally) sick and tired most of the time.Everything is under control and I’m hoping my blood test’s results will get better soon!

I’m naturally very energetic, active person and not being able to do as much as I used to due to physical limitations is quite frustrating to be honest. No amount of rest would make me feel better these days, so my usual techniques of "getting back on track" don't work.

It’s just hard for me to accept the fact that I might do things slower these days. Of course I don’t think about it everyday and I don’t talk about it publicly as it seem to be a “first world’s problem”.

I'm grateful for everything in my life and in general I'm more than fine. I almost deleted everything I wrote so far in fear my intetions might be missunderstood.

I mean, yeah, it’s health, the most important thing in life, but hey, in general I’m young and healthy (besides of what I’ve just shared, lol) and there are MANY people in much worse situations, so I feel almost bad for “complaining” about it!

Being slower at things makes me fell back into perfectionism trap!!

What these things have in common? Well, when I’m delivering something late/not as often as I hoped to, I start thinking it has to be PERFECT. As if I had to do an extra (probably unnecessary) work to make up for that.I know it’s not true, it’s just the ego talking. Also when I work less one day, I feel like I need to catch up the next day and it becomes a vicious cycle of being tired > doing less > trying to catch up > being tired because of that and so on!

Uhh, I’m getting better at managing these feelings, I just wanted to share a bit more personal things today to help you better understand what’s going on. It’s mostly a physical health thing.

I’m taking good care of myself and hoping I’ll be able to get back to my usual routines and delivering valuable content more often soon!

After this loooong intro, let me show you my recent sketches and drawings!

This page is a classic one. These are typical mindless warm-up sketches. Basically I do these before working on any “serious” illustration just to warm up my hand.

 I can’t get over the importance of such practice!!!

practicing shapes and shades!

It’s getting interesting!

All of these sketches were made using reference photos from Pinterest.

In general it’s my least favorite source of photo references but this time I knew I’m not going to use any of these sketches for commercial purposes, so I didn’t have to worry about the source being legit.

The best part is… I saved these references and I’ll make a photo vs sketch post and tell you even more about these drawings!

 Drawing from reference isn’t something I do often, so it could be interesting.

It all started with the house and the tree. Then I made the sketch of house and the stairs. Then I figured I can just find more photos and fill the whole spread with such little drawings!

I wasn’t looking for anything specific. Literally I just opened Pinterest app and sketched first building/landscape I could find that day!

It took me a few days to fill this spread as these were my warm-up drawings and I didn’t want them to take me more than 30 minutes a day.

It was a fun practice and I’ll definitely do that again in the future!

Maybe next time I’ll be picking references more carefully but there’s something about drawing the first thing that caught my attention that day!

After making these small sketches, I felt like I need to get more loose with my art.

Mostly because I was gripping the pencil a biiiit too tight. I wanted to do something with colored pencils but couldn’t decide on one color.

Then I remembered I have a rainbow pencil!! I got it years ago, not knowing that I could do with it. I guess now I found it’s purpose, lol!

What’s rainbow pencil? This pencil lead has a few colors – mine is red, yellow, blue and green. The color shift as you draw and move the pencil! I was obsessed with these as a kid.

These are quite random doodles and a failed self-portrait (I messed up facial proportions but it’s fine!) a house and some random plants.

Fun sketches! I also used a navy blue pencil to create some kind of outlines. Not only because my rainbow pencil was more like “yellow+red” pencil but also I just didn’t like the lack of contrast.

It still feels loose and fun!!!

About forget-me-nots!

These are unedited scans so colors might not be 100% accurate and there might be some dust specks. (just saying!)

These are sticker designs. One of these will become a vinyl sticker!

and this is a print. It’s still not finished but I’m getting there!!

It needs some more outlines and maybe more contrast on the leaves.

I think it’ll also make a really nice phone wallpaper and I’ll make these as soon this illustration is finished!

 This is a prototype/final sketch of a coloring page!

I mean, I just need to trace this design with fineliners to make it look cleaner!

As you might noticed, the print design is just part of this bigger design.

I find it the most effective way to make coloring pages and prints in one theme! (let’s just ignore the fact that this month I’m late with making both.)

I hope you enjoyed this post!!!

I have a whole list of topics for new posts and some ALMOST edited videos and I’ll be working on these this week.

Thank you so much for your understanding and patience!!!

Love,

Marta