some unfinished and unpublished marker illustrations, digital art fail + current work in progress 💚✨ (Patreon)

Hi!

Today I’m going to show you a current work in progress, one unpublished illustration and a few pages from my “messy” marker sketchbook, also called “test” sketchbook!

This is the sketchbook where I literally test colors for my illustrations or just doodle to see how particular plants/colors/compositions work together. This sketchbook is almost finished already, but honestly, I have 2 sketchbooks for this purpose at the moment. Maybe even more, since boundaries are quite liquid and some of my “test” sketchbooks became “fancy” ones and vice versa!

I’m going to write a long post about my sketchbooks (or maybe I should say: system of keeping several sketchbooks) soon! I talked a little bit about it on my IG stories (it’s saved in “sketchbooks” highlights) so if you haven’t heard it already, I encourage you to check it out.

My pencil sketches are usually neat and clean but color tests and marker doodles? Not so much.

Okay, let’s go!

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Here I was testing colors and composition of some Spring flowers I spotted in a park! (buttercup, germander speedwell, chickweed)

I just love how these colors work together! This composition is also really nice, yet I never finished this illustration nor develop this idea any further.

I was full of doubts. At that time I doubted and questioned by ability to draw and I just assumed that if I made one good composition of these flowers, I couldn’t make another one. Yeah, it was a dark time for my creativity. Now it doesn’t make any sense but that’s what made me abandon this illustration/idea.

Here are pictures I took for inspiration/reference! 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________Primroses! Oh my, I struggled to pick right colors!

Basically I couldn’t decide if these flowers should be more white/bright or not. Now I think I should’ve just kept them ivory/soft yellow. Actually I had a hard time drawing these flowers in general. I made a few pages of sketches of them to figure out how they REALLY look but kept feeling like I’m missing something. I’ll show you these sketches soon, so you’ll get to see for yourself!______________________________________________________________________________________________________

To avoid the color picking drama, I switched markers and pencils to tablet and tried to make this illustration digitally.

I gave up half way cause I didn’t love the composition!______________________________________________________________________________________________________

One of my all time favorite flower – harebell! (and a few random flowers)

This is a typical color test page from my sketchbook. A few messy notes here and there and several failed attempts. Here I experimented with a white gouache base layer! Adding such layer underneath purple color makes this color pop on this ivory paper! (should I write a separate post about it?!)______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I ended up making an illustration based on this page. I shared only a work in progress of this on my IG stories but never shared the finished illustration anywhere online.

See? I even took nice insta worthy photo of it!______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Let’s end with my current work in progress.

I’m learning how to draw gooseberries. Actually I’ve made tons of sketches of these berries before, so this time it’s more about colors. This is my first time drawing gooseberries in color and I think it looks pretty nice so far!

I hope you enjoyed it and if you have any feedback/questions -  I'm here!

Marta