As I was posting some progress images yesterday through my Instagram Stories, I thought to myself that it was a shame that some of those images or little videos got stored away and not so easy to appreciate progress. I also thought that it would be fun to transfer those stories into my blog as a personal diary mostly of my creative process, outside inspiration and other considerations. Without a specific plan on how I am going to do it, my attempt is to post daily as a why to keep those stories to myself and to, hopefully, be of some interest to you as well.

Quite recently I also realized that I wanted to improve my drawing skills and technique. I personally felt that I had gone as far as I could learning on my own and I wanted to upgrade or relearn some basic mediums such as graphite. With that purpose I have started receiving classes and focusing on botanical subjects to draw from. Being in Edinburgh and surrounded by so much nature, it is no wonder I shifted into botanicals. So, this is what I have been sharing through my stories lately:

From all those leaves (for which I have to properly learn the scientific names), I picked yesterday the ones on the top to start drawing and shading with graphite. I felt it could be a lovely composition and a good exercise for me.

I am happy that I also filmed the process in a time-lapse so that I can keep track of it. This pencil illustration took about 40 minutes and it is still the basis for more detail and dimension to add through shading. Here is the video I edited from the time-lapse I posted on IGTV:

And here is the illustration I posted yesterday:

Well, that’s all for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed this new format of post and I will publish some more tomorrow.

Thank you for reading!