sketchbook ep 26✏️ | daily sketching practice (5 pages of sketches) | mostly pumpkins, botanical studies and cozy things✨ | 2023 vs 2024 pumpkin drawings 📖🧡 (Patreon)

Hi, hello!

It’s just me not letting myself overthink things!

As you already know, I draw a lot (duuuh) and sometimes I find myself not sharing my sketches or ending up with tons of content to share at once.

While these huge long posts with 10+ images with literally essays can be fun sometimes, I want to mix them with shorter ones.

Let’s see how it works out!

Thanks to my new sketchbook (I introduced it in the previous post) I developed the habit of daily sketching!

I mean, I’ve been sketching regularly for years, but it’s usually several times a week.

Sometimes I’d make 3 pages of sketches in a day, sometimes I wouldn’t sketch for 3 days.

There’s nothing wrong with that and most of the time this “system” (or actually lack of it) works well.

I'll tell you more about my new system and why I've decided to change things up very soon!

I wanted to do it today, but it'll make it yet another super long post :D

Plus, I'm still figuring out things!

For now, I can tell you, the main rule is to sketch everyday and fill maximum 1 page of the A5 sketchbook.

Okay, now, let me show you the sketches!

There are dates in the right bottom corner (in day.month.year format), so you can see that some pages were made in 2 days.

Pumpkins (are you surprised at this point?), apples, rowan berries, acorn, candles and some random leaves.

 It’s just an autumnal sketchbook page! Maybe that’s why I felt the need to add this text to it, lol.

Where are my fellow coffee lovers at?!

I like how you can see how I got more comfortable with this theme as I was sketching!

That’s why I’m a huuuge advocate of drawing the same thing multiple times and/or dedicating the page to just one thing! 

Autumn vibes are strong!

Ginkgo, blueberries (ok, not so autumnal), five-leaved ivy, sea buckthorn.

For the LONGEST TIME I wanted to make an illustration/sketchbook page/sticker sheet/print/anything featuring flowers in particular color. Like pink, yellow, purple, white, blue... I know this idea is a bit cliché, but oh well.

For the past few years I made several lists of potential flowers to draw, but have lost ALL of them (even a notebook! don’t ask me how, it just vanished).

Yesterday I thought, it couldn’t be that hard. and I can learn things along the way! I don’t have to draw each flower perfectly from the get go.

So I sketched first pink flowers that came to my mind. (it’s definitely not my best peony sketch but it’s ok!)

Today’s page is continuation of pink flowers theme.

 By the way, the flower’s names are written both in English and Polish (my native language)

If some of these sketches look like potential sticker designs to you, well, it might be because some of them actually are.

I’ll tell you more about it soon, as this post were supposed to be shorter (mission failed)

Now, let’s finish with the illustration of colorful pumpkins.

First, finished color tests!

Work in progess shots:

 I had to recolor that one pumpkin cause this green shade didn’t look edible! :D

I don’t really like to compare my works to anything, even my older works, but let’s make an exception today!

Here are pumpkins from September 2023 vs September 2024.

2023

 2024 

I don’t wanna say any of them is better.

I feel like at some point art practice is more about making the process more enjoyable and maintaining the current skill level, than improving drastically.

It’s the same with sports and actually anything in life.

It’s not about making improvements/getting better anyway (at least for me).

(the light was baaad today, but here are both illustrations together!)

My style has changed a bit and I must say, I got better at blending colors, but I love both of these pages!

Also the outlines became bolder and I use a bit more saturated colors.

I’ll continue with this daily sketching habit combined with drawing more with markers and we’ll see how it goes!

Meanwhile, I’ll be catching up on previous Patreon rewards!

I’d love to hear your feedback (on literally anything!) :D

Was this post a bit shorter this time? It seems shorter to mee but I don't know!

Do you prefer longer or shorter posts? Are they even the kind of content you enjoy?

I like writing these kind of blog posts and sharing my sketches/drawings here, but I'd like to know if you share my enthusiasm for this :D

Love,

Marta