Drawing from Nature
This winter break I went to the beach with my family. We go to San Blas every other year to spend new year eve. It’s a 6-hour drive from where I live, so I downloaded several skillshare classes to watch on the road.
One of the classes I took was:
The title of the course caught my eye since I am very interested in finding my unique visual style. Plus, I always carry a passport-sized notebook with me for the same purpose: to grow my visual library. The instructor, Marie-Noelle Wurm, is very energetic and eloquent. If you want to learn a great technique to classify and organise a visual library, I would highly recommend this class.
San Blas is one of the biggest mangrove swamps in Mexico. The vegetation is vast and beautiful (there are also millions of mosquitos and crocodiles). I took my notebook and a brush pen to the beach and started coping and analysing the leaves around me (fig. 1).
I had also taken a digital painting class by Marta Beck so I could take advantage of my new toys an iPad and the Procreate app.
So I decided to combine a few of the leaves and flowers from the beach to create this digital illustration (fig. 2)
It was a fun exercise, and I’m pleased with the results. I will continue to draw schematic representations of leaves, flowers and other objects to grow my visual vocabulary and to create beautiful compositions that I can later use as prints.
Update: this illustration was featured in Flow Magazine’s 2019 Calendar edition.
If you would like to see more of my work go to www.frankiezek.com.
