I haven’t shared what I’m sketching and illustrating in a while so I wanted to do that today. I’ve been painting a lot of different animals, objects from nature but also food and veggies lately, partly to loosen up and partly for my portfolio. I’m enjoying the different subjects a lot, particularly drawing animals is something I’ve not done in a while. Painting fur can be quite a challenge. I also have a special love for food illustration. This might not be nature journaling in a strict sense, but the paintings are still connected to everything I love and have around me daily.
I’ve thought a lot about my sketching and painting habits over the summer when I couldn’t paint. My recent hand injury partly came from tightening up so much and focusing on a lot of details with my illustration style, so I want (and need) to explore a looser painting style right now. I’ve never been a hyperrealistic painter and I totally lack the patience for that, but I still like adding a few details. I also love Japanese ink drawings and their minimalism and flow, so I think my recent explorations are partly influenced by this.
I’m having a lot of fun working with a bigger brush and bolder strokes, but I’m also struggling in places and many sketches don’t turn out as expected. I’m taking this as a learning experience. The important part is to keep working at it and to use paper that I’m comfortable working with (very important).
Here are a few of my recent food sketches and illustrations (more are in my main portfolio on the website). Most of them aren’t in sketchbook format, because for scanning it’s much easier to have them on a sheet of paper. I hope you enjoy the paintings.
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I love your illustrations! So fresh and personal 🙂 The ramen bowl is my favourite out of this post! Thank you for always sharing such inspiring content!
Thank you so much Anne! 🙂
How delightful! I don’t see any ink lines. Are you painting the lines with watercolour and brush?
Thank you Kathy! 🙂 For a lot of these I did a light pencil sketch before I added paint, and for less complex shapes (like the vegetables, or some of the food) I just start directly with watercolor.
Hi Julia! I absolutely love the local wildlife illustrations! I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to paint the fox and the wildcat! As always, your illustrations are fresh, crisp and clean. I think it’s great that you are loosening up. I have never been one to strive for for hyper-realism, figuring that photos do that already. It’s nice to capture your own interpretation and make it personal. The colors are beautiful and really shout “autumn” 🙂 Have a great day and thank you for sharing!
Thank you Rose, I really appreciate it! The great things about working with loose brush strokes is that painting takes less time, although I did several versions of the cat. 😉 You’re right about photography (although that can also be done painterly and less realistic), finding my own view is why I love illustration and painting so much!
Beautiful work. I really love the animals. My favorite of all? The toast! It’s lovely.
Thank you Kim! The toast was fun to do!
Thank you for sharing! I love how you leave the areas for the highlights white – I’m still learning shadows and highlights and just seeing how you create yours helps me on my journey.
My favourite is the toad – looks like it might jump off the page any minute!
Thank you Ayoka, very much appreciated and I’m glad my paintings help you to learn! 🙂
I’m glad you’ve been able to find other ways to illustrate without aggravating your hand injury. That’s awesome! I love all the illustrations. I love the egg sandwich! Makes me want to make an egg sandwich right now! 🙂
Thank you for sharing your talent