In this exercise, the aim was to create an accurate study of a plant. For this exercise, I chose a Sansevieria trifasciata Laurentii, commonly known as a snake plant. The only other plant we currently have in the house is a dragon plant which despite the exotic sounding name, is a shade plant and isn’t as interesting to draw.
Rather than pick a close up area of this plant, I decided to draw the plant as a whole where the context would be a bit more appropriate. I used a fibre pen to create this and tried to represent it in a vanilla fashion without any shading as such, just the pattern and form.
For a different take on this, I went with stretched paper and watercolour for the background, soaking it entirely then dropping in some blue to cover the white, and a few random splats of red and yellow. I dropped on some alcohol without much success, I think the paint had already got a hold and wasn’t quite wet enough to spread. When this was dry, I took a pipette and filled this with a thinned mixture of green and loosely drew the leaves with just the tip. Using yellow gouache, i went around the edges and returned with a yellow posca marker to fill in the interiors. Taking some of the remaining yellow gouache, i thinned this down and used an old toothbrush to spackle the surface.
Conclusion
This reminded me of the objective / subjective illustration exercise in Level 1, which I enjoyed. If I had the time I would have tried this as a linocut, after researching the work of Angie Lewin and Rachael Louise Hibbs. I can’t imagine this more abstract image ever working as wallpaper, but I think if the background was created using something like Dr. Marten’s inks with rich pigments and alcohol with a lino cut over-print, then I could be onto something…
OCA Illustration 2: Responding to a brief 