Brighter Times

Happy New Year everyone! I know things haven’t been great lately, but I’m really hoping that some brighter times will be coming to all of us soon.

I’m feeling cautiously optimistic for this year and quite inspired to dig deep into my creative practice to see what comes out of it. I don’t quite have the mental capacity to sink loads of time into a single illustration right now so I’ve been focusing on creating sketches made with wobbly and expressive lines, and I’ve been enjoying it immensely! I have a lot of respect for photorealism and I have enjoyed creating work that’s as accurate as I can manage, but right now I am besotted with this naive and wonky aesthetic.

I’m particularly pleased with this collection of Cosmos and Emperor Moth sketches. I just think they’re really charming!

I’ve also enjoyed taking my sketches and putting them into this digital sketchbook. I have a history of using physical and digital art journals but I haven’t done this in quite a while, it feels nice to play around with a kind of art journal again. I’ve also noticed that I’m beginning to take an interest in collage again which means I will most likely be experimenting and combining that with art journaling again soon.

It’s interesting to me that my enthusiasm for art journaling and collage seems to be cyclical, I normally fancy experimenting with these mediums during the winter and spring months, though I’m not sure why that is! Do any of you have cyclical art interests? Perhaps art journaling just makes me feel cosy, which is a feeling I constantly want to be in during the colder part of the year haha!

Recolouring Botanical Sketches

Today I stumbled upon some ink drawings in my sketchbook from a few months ago. I had forgotten about them and how much I really like them so I decided I would rework them a bit to fit my current body of work. I scanned the sketchbook pages, cleaned up the scans and then started experimenting. I really like the lines and ink washes of the original drawings so I decided I would recolour them from black to a rusty shade and then see if it still works. I’m really happy with how warm and cosy the illustrations are now! I hope I can offer prints of these illustrations soon!!

Rough Anemone Sketches

I decided to practice sketching some Anemones the other night. It was late, cosy, and I was up way too late working on these! I haven’t drawn this type of flower before so I thought it would be wise to practice them before trying a full illustration. Thankfully they were really fun and satisfying to sketch out, so I’m sure they will feature in a full illustration soon!

Are there any particular flowers you would like to see me draw next?