sketchbook ep 25✏️ | remembering who I am🌠 | new sketchbook anxiety | sunflowers and pumpkins – new sketches, plant study, work in progress! + life update | long post ☕ (Patreon)

Hi!

Bring yourself some snacks and hot beverage, as this post is quite long!

First off, quick (but major) life update.

I didn’t want to talk about this big upcoming change sooner, as I wasn’t sure whether it’d work out, but it did!

We’re moving to another city!

Not far away from the current one but I was in this city only twice before (the second time was to see the apartment we ended up choosing), so it’s a new place and I don’t know anyone and anything there.

In the past 6 years I lived in 3 different cities and none of them has my heart.

Okay, maybe my hometown does, but I’m not going back there.

This new one also doesn’t have my heart yet, and who knows, maybe it won’t change, but I hope I’ll like it there!

I might share more on this topic soon. Not because I like to tell you unnecessary details from my personal life, but because it’s kind of art related!

After years of working in a living room and not even having my own desk, I’m going to have my own office/studio!

While I’m very grateful and happy it also feels extremely overwhelming!

I’ve been having lots of important decisions to make lately and it’s only the beginning. I feel like my brain capacity is fullll!

It also affects my art in someway.

It doesn’t mean I wasn’t drawing at all!

I was.

Let me show you some of my recent works.

When I was walking to the post office (to send some delayed Patreon mails!) I spotted the beautiful plant I always admire (online) but never saw in real life before. I was stunned.

It’s scarlet firethorn. I walked by this plant many many times and haven’t notice it before.

How come?!

I like to praise myself for being a person who always lives in the moment and enjoys little things in life, always on a lookout for gorgeous plants.

Yet near the post office I usually tense up (planning what I’m going to say, dreading I’m going to make a fool of myself in front of all these people etc etc, you know how it is… :D) and I just don’t look around!

It inspired me not only to draw this plant but also to be even more mindful, especially when I’m outside!

For the next few days I was taking daily walks and EVERYDAY I found something spectacular.

Well, in my opinion.

I’m going to share more of these finds in the next posts, as I want to draw these plants first.

It’ll be more fun this way!

Okay, ANYWAY, here are some sketches I did:

and illustrations:

(it's the same page, just scanned. I don't know what are these yellow marks on the left side. I guess I need to cover them with another illustration... :D)

It’s quick, it’s simple. It reminded me how much I love adding dark backgrounds to my illustrations.

That’s something I don’t do often enough!

The next day I took a slightly different route home (coming back from my daily walk) and saw these giant sunflowers!

This month I draw looots of sunflowers, as it’s September’s theme!

Some recent sketches:

Here are finished sticker designs:

 There will be a few more of designs in this style.

And a print, of course.

For now I only have some messy thumbnail sketches.

In these past few days I was closing the deal with apartment and making so many decisions in that regard, that I didn’t have much brain power left to come up with any good design.

But there’s even more sunflower illustrations in the making.

 This is my small sketchbook but I might use these designs as stickers. Why not?

Here I use washi tape as I want to draw kind of a frame around the design (something similar to the one I made with firethorn)

Now it’s time to show you some of my pumpkin illustrations.

I really needed to find a simple thing to draw this month, that wouldn’t be a theme here and wouldn’t be any new plant I need to study.

Usually I start with some pencil sketches and then I work with colors, but I already knew how to draw pumpkins, so I could do it the other way round.

First, I swatched all the colors I might use to color pumpkins.

I made some pumpkin illustrations before (have you seen my recent reel on IG?) but I didn’t take any notes of colors I used back then and I got a few new orange markers, so I had to try them anyway.

Then I just started drawing. (I’ll share these color combinations with you later!)

As you can see, there are more pumpkins already sketched on this page.

I want to fill the whole page with such little illustrations.

I’m thinking of using white gouache for at least one of them! :>

As I already mentioned, I felt really overwhelmed, especially last week, so I couldn’t focus on anything. Even drawing.

I wasn’t able to make any complex colored illustration but I wanted to keep sketching anyway.

You might already know that I have a love-hate relationship with the sketchbook I’m currently using for my pencil sketches (it’s mostly hate to be honest).

I couldn’t be bothered by that, so I just found an old notebook and used it as a sketchbook.

I thought it’d be easier to do it this way. It wasn’t.

Actually, I used it for the first time in late 2022.

I love the paper (I think it might be recycled but I’m not sure).

Even though I use multiple sketchbooks, I still experience the fear of ruining the nice (almost) empty sketchbook! Apparently even when it’s just a notebook.

I think it might be because it’s a notebook my partner brought me from the work conference, so it’s not like I can go and buy another one. I don’t know!

But instead of giving in to this fear I’ve decided this nice notebook is now my second pencil sketchbook.

To make it even more challenging, I set some rules: using eraser and making initial sketches (with blue pencil) aren’t allowed in this notebook!

Oh well, it all started with finding another sketchbook to avoid the drama with my usual one, but ended up as overcoming my “fears” and setting up challenges.

What can I say. It was a great choice anyway.

Here’s the first page of the sketchbook/notebook/whatever you wanna call it, from 2022:

(made with some old watercolor pencil)

It’s nice, isn’t it? No wonder for two years I was pretending this notebook doesn’t exist.

Here are new sketches:

Just pumpkins, exploring shapes, designing potential stickers (not for Patreon though!:>)

The next day I didn’t feel like drawing but at the end of the day I felt bad for neglecting my practice, so I did something I almost never do.

I was drawing in my bed!

It was dark quite (I had to edit this picture so you can see anything :D).

I didn’t want to overthink it so I didn’t use any reference pictures, nothing, just me and my pencil.

I finished it the next morning.

At this point I started to feel pretty confident in drawing pumpkins.

The next day I set the timer for 20 minutes (that’s what I usually do when I don’t feel like drawing but still want to do it) to draw more pumpkins. I filled about 1/2 of this page (maybe 2/3) and finished it the next day. I like most of these!

I’m in that weird phase where I have too many ideas and too little focus. It’s not even about time.

Yes, I have a lot of new things to do as I need to renovate and furnish the whole apartment in less than two months, but I can carve out time to create things, of course!

I think I just need to kind of get used to it and learn myself how to live in this new reality.

I’m not complaining, how could I. It’s just aaall new.

I have some ideas how to make this easier.

Like, setting up specific time for creativity, since now I don’t have that much time on my hands.

It could work! We’ll see how it goes!

I'll keep you updated!

I hope you enjoyed today's post and don't mind these personal stories!

Oh my, I should post more often, so I don't end up with tons of things to share (I haven't even share everything today! :D)

Love,

Marta