ginkgo leaves drawings🌟 | a lot of scans, pictures, coloring page in progress! | long post ☕ (Patreon)

Hi!

I’ve been drawing tons and tons of ginkgo leaves recently, trying to come up with illustrations that would work well as stickers and as a print.

I’ve come to the point where I have 6 sketchbook spreads full of these leaves.

Some were made just for practice and some will be used to create this month’s rewards for you!

The days keep getting shorter and it’s been dark, windy and gloomy for days here! The last time sun came out for like an hour, was 12 days ago (yes, I’m counting, lol).

What’s the better time to use happy colors, such as yellow in my works? Attempts to take any pictures of them drive me crazy but that’s another story.

Here I wrote a whole big paragraph about my struggles with finding good light for photos and videos but no no no, I’m not going to complain about it again :D

Well! With that being said, I scanned my sketchbooks and today I’m going to show you some almost unedited scans.

Almost, cause I did play with levels and contrast but I’d need to clean some lines, remove dust and speckles, do a better job with color balance, remove the background etc.

Okay, let’s start from the oldest to newest one!

I believe I already shared maybe two of these but wanted to share all of them in one place. Let’s go!

This is how it all started.

Just simple leaves to try which colors would work well for them.

I shared this here and on my IG. I added this blue rectangle in the background later.

I wanted to see how these yellow leaves would look with a pastel blue background. It look nice! I used this color combination later in my next works.

Simple warm up illustration!

I made these just for fun. Maybe I’ll use some of these leaves in the sticker sheet but in general, these were made as a form of a warm up. Nothing fancy!

Sticker designs!

I’m not sure if I’m going to use all of them in this month’s sticker sheet but the spread looks really nice!

Another little spread.

You might noticed already that I avoid drawing in the middle of the sketchbook when I’m working on something that would be potentially used in a printed form. Editing the middle of the sketchbook is still challenging to me, so I’d rather avoid the drama! I made these designs just to have more illustrations to choose from when making a sticker sheet.

I think the one in bottom right is really nice. It’s going to be a vinyl sticker!

The final spread!

This one is my favorite!! I started from the right side. This big illustration is going to be this month’s print (and also a phone wallpaper). I used this narrow space below this illustration to make a washi tape style design.

It inspired me to create the whole left page of this spread!!

I always wanted to create a sticker sheet with circle and rectangle stickers and this time I just… went for it? There’s a question mark cause I was so much in the flow state, that I almost don’t remember how I created at least half of these illustrations.

All I can remember was a feeling. I had butterflies in my stomach, it felt like falling in love. I don’t remember when was the last time I felt like this while creating. What a blessing.

ANYWAY!

I think I’ll turn the left side of this spread into a printable, maybe?

Aaand I’ll make a mini bonus sticker sheet for all of you who gets monthly mail from me.

I always include a little something as a bonus but usually keep it a surprise. This time you know what to expect! :D

Here’s a (bad) photo of most of these spreads! (two of them are in the same sketchbook, so yeah)

Okay, the last thing!

This is actually a glimpse (very small, but still!) of how I create composition for my works.

That’s one of the methods, which is just drawing something on a loose sheet of paper and then find the best frame. In a nutshell. There are some nuances to this method and one day I’ll finally talk about it in a proper way.

Long story short - I was drawing a ginkgo branch and then I chose the nice frame from it and transfer this part of the sketch into my sketchbook.

This is really messy, I did some math on this page. Basically I was calculating the width of washi tape and the size of the illustration/frame (it had to have the same ratio as A6 size). I could clean this scan before sharing it with you (that was tempting) but I wanted to keep it real! 

I’ll turn this one into a coloring page! Of course I’d have to align the drawing to right side and clean it up and everything, but this composition is really nice, isnt’ it?!

Uff, that was a long post!

PS. I’ll upload phone wallpapers this week!

PS2. In case you haven’t seen it already:I’ve sent October mail very late this month (at November 15th) so please don’t worry if it hasn’t arrived yet!

Have a beautiful day! 

Marta