How I layout sketchbook pages – botanical sketching edition

A lot of you asked me (on my new idea + feedback board) how I design and layout my sketchbook pages, and if I can give more drawing tips around them. I’m happy to do that.

I’ll start with a page of botanical sketches – flowers that grow on my balcony in summer. I’ve just thrown a few packet of mixed seeds and some that I had collected around the neighborhood into the soil this year and watched what happened. To my joy, a few colorful field flowers have grown that hopefully do not need a lot of water:
Bugloss, California poppy, meadow pink, yellow-rattle, white campion, bellflowers, flax, marigold, common centaury – with the exception of the poppy they’re all local plants in my region (Europe). Some are considered weeds that have more or less disappeared as field flowers due to intensive agriculture. By identifying them and drawing some of them I definitely have learned a lot about German flora. And I learned a lot of interesting English plant names.

I decided to sketch three flowers per page, with my current horizontal sketchbook that gives enough space for each plant: I wanted to include the flower itself with an indicated stem and a few leaves.

I grabbed my field kit stuff even though I was only sketching on my balcony – I haven’t done any field sketching this year yet, although I really wanted to. But botanical sketching at home is also fun. I brought my foldable stool, a support board with clamps, sketchbook, small pen/brush holder with a pencil, fountain pen and two round brushes, palette, painting rag and a clip-on water container – a minimal toolkit.
Also note my almost empty palette – I haven’t gotten around to refill it completely after painting so many landscapes in recent months.

I often start with a title on the top left, sometimes I forget and add it later. I added small pencil marks so that the space for each flower would be roughly the same – again, this sounds like I plan careful layouts each time, but in reality I often forget and just fill up the page as I go (I think you can actually see this in my sketchbook pages). But it’s a good habit to think about these layout choices first. I also reserved a bit of space at the bottom for my notes.

And then I sat down and just did a pencil sketch for each of the flowers. It was a windy day, so I ended up picking one of the small meadow pinks so that I could get a closer look. The drawing itself always goes from big to small, I add ellipses for big shapes (like round flowers) first and then put in the smaller shapes and lines after that. I add these preliminary lines lightly so that I can erase or refine them in a second step. This gives the drawings a more finished look – if you leave the underdrawing in, the sketch will have a more spontaneous study page character, which can also be interesting. I use both of these approaches depending on what I feel like.

When drawing very delicate parts of a plant, or a bent leaf or stem, I try to observe it very closely, and then make one decisive stroke instead of many small ones. This helps to draw clear lines with elegant curves, especially when you create the movement with your arm, instead of just the wrist.

I tried to keep my watercolor application loose, much in the spirit of the loose but precise technique: more or less detailed sketch, loose watercolor washes, additional details here and there at the end. This has served me well for botanical sketches.

I’m happy with how the poppy and the meadow pink turned out, I used rather thin paint mixes for them; for the bugloss (the purple flower in the middle) the color ended up a bit too dark and dense, and I tried to bring back a slightly lighter value by adding a light blue colored pencil on top. I’m not perfectly happy with it, but these things happen. Sometimes you need to paint a flower a few times before you can create a good portrait of it. I’ll certainly keep trying.

By the way I’ve given up in mixing exact, life-like purples and pinks – it’s just not possible without resorting to fluorescent paint like opera pink (which is fine, it’s just not lightfast, so I don’t use it) or some kind of practical magic (which of course I’m in favor of if you happen to know any!). Purples and pinks are a color in plants that is always more vibrant in nature and hard to show on paper, the pigments we have just reach their limitations. So I just mix whatever purple is closest to what I can see, and try to get the overall feel of the flower right, instead of spending endless time on mixing colors. This saves a lot of time and stress. If you look into illustrated botanical guides, this is what every botanical artist needs to compromise on – the pinks and purples are seldomly quite the same.

I found I also had a bit of space for a separate leaf, and some seed capsules.

For the text I used a Kaweco Perkeo fountain pen filled with waterproof ink – I keep experimenting with non-waterproof fountain pen ink, which comes in so many beautiful colors, and then keep knocking over paint water or get rain on my pages, so that doesn’t always end up well.
I noted the German name, Latin name, and some characteristics of the plant, like if it’s annual or perennial, how big can it get, when does it bloom. I could have added more notes around the drawings, but ran a bit out of steam.

Overall, I’m happy that I planned the page layout before I started sketching!

I hope this in was interesting to you – I have another page with bird sketches that I could take apart for you, or maybe a few landscapes sketches. Please let me know what you’d like to see in the comments.

Or: another option is my new idea board, this is a big help for me to find out what you’d like me to write about – this post is the direct result of your requests for more drawing and sketchbook layout tips! You can leave your requests and ideas, or vote on existing ones:
Ideas and requests board

Thank you so much for your input!