I'm going to sing Lisa Congdon's praises again. I am so happy I discovered both her and Creativebug because she is teaching me so much as I continue my online learning addiction. Her approachable style, encouragement to practice regularly, and reminders that I shouldn't be aiming for perfection are what make her an ideal teacher in my book. Not to mention: her work is really great.
In addition to her 31 Things To Draw Course, Lisa has a Drawing and Illustration Basics class which I'm going through at the same time and feel like a whole world has been opened to me. A world of drawing. Something I never thought I could do...but I'm doing it. And yeah, I'm drawing at an elementary level but I feel like I'm improving each day and I'm completely enjoying myself, which is a good enough reason to continue.
Today I'm sharing the sketches and a bit of the process that I took to make this month's floral tech calendar. (If you didn't get yours yet, you can get it HERE.) Lisa recommends drawing things again and again and in as many variations as possible.
My final piece looks like this:
I started with sketching a page of asters.
Chose one, cropped and lightened it in Photoshop. Then brought it into Illustrator and used Live Trace and the pen tool to vectorize and smooth it out.
Then played with color, added stems, and built a page full of flowers. It was fun and I'm happy with the way it came out :)
