sketchbook ep 38✏️ | mostly sketches and work in progress | plant pictures📷 | inspirations found on the hike and in my old works🌿🪄 (Patreon)

Hi!

Uff, it feels like it’s been a while and it’s been only a few days!

With that being said, I also feel like my writing might not be the best today, as I’m still recovering after this week’s madness (my social battery is drained and I had food poisoning, nothing super serious!) BUT I was supposed to make a post yesterday, so here we go!!

Let’s start with the sketches!

These are sketches for sticker designs. Usually I draw them directly in the sketchbook, but I wasn’t feeling very creatively confident (if that makes sense?!) that day, so I made these quite messy sketches instead.I also wanted to make sure each design is quite unique, so they don’t look like the same drawing of a different fruit.

I think I’ll just copy these to my sketchbook!An update on that will be posted in the next ‘sketchbook episode’!

Sketches of the four o’clock flower.

Since the first time I learned about this flower I’ve been fascinated by it.

What makes it so unique?

It’s known for its ability to produce multiple flower colors on the same plant, some of these flowers can change colors overtime!

This flower blooms in the evening (hence its common name).

In most languages its common name include romantic words like ‘night’, ‘beauty’, ‘evening’ or ‘princess’ (for some countries it’s prince!), in Polish (my native language) it’s called ‘little weirdo’, which cracks me up every time.This plant is in fact a bit weird though, lol.

I spotted it in 2021 in someone's garden (in our previous neighbourhood) and took some pictures!

In general I’m really into flowers that bloom in the evening!

There’s something magical about them.

I made the ‘night garden’ illustration in February 2021.

At that time I still was still too scared to focus on botanical illustrations only.

I was in the transition phase from drawing other things and was trying to find my place in the illustration world.

(it’s the printed version -gift from my sister. The illustration was made digitally - I used to be a digital artist!)

The idea of drawing ‘just flowers’ seemed honestly just boring, but I remember being so invested in making this particular illustration (I spent hours on the research! since I didn’t know much about plants), so I leaned into drawing plants and I never looked back.

Well, I just realized I never actually told the full story on how I became botanical illustrator!

A closer look at the sketches:

I found the print of the ‘night garden’ illustration while looking for something else (most of our stuff is still in the boxes, I got used to it, lol).

Then I started thinking about all the gorgeous flowers I didn’t get to include in that illustration. Since I knew I wanted to draw something colorful that’s not berries, the four o’clock flower seemed like a perfect choice!

I’m working on a colorful illustration of this plant as well!

(it’s still a work in progress)

Speaking of colorful things: an update on colorful fruits!

This spread is done, yayy!

(+ the work in progress scan I shared in the previous post)

This one is still a work in progress but it’s coming along nicely:

By the way, have you noticed how many different shades of green I’m using for these illustrations? I've been enjoying the process A LOT!

Let’s finish with the sketches I made this morning.

They’re based on the flowers I saw on the hike a few days ago.

Here are my photos of these plants!

I used them as references for my sketches (quite loosely)

I wonder if you'd like to see more of the pictures of plants I draw! Of course I don't have photos of every single plant but sometimes I do! :>

PS. I’ll reply to your messages and comments this weekend!

Thanks for your patience and for your support, as always!

I’m so grateful for you!

I’ll be back on Sunday with another ‘the catch up series’ post!

Love,

Marta