Picked up a new succulent the other day. It is a Rainbow Elephant Bush (portulacaria afra variegata). Cute little thing…
The cactus drawing was something that I had been wanting to do for a while. I was happy with how it turned out so I wanted to do some more little drawings of plants. I took a week off from drawing and when I came back I thought my new succulent might make a good study. I spent some time just looking it over and decided to use it as more of a starting point rather than an actual study.
I like some if the shapes more than the actual leaves so I decided to make them more abstract. The nice thing about the cactus was its simplicity. I tried to keep that in mind as I sketched. I started with more realistic details of the leaves to get a feel for them before slowly moving to just shapes.
While I was inking I was really thinking about the line. I’m going to add more depth and detail with the coloring but I want the shape and lines to work in their own right. I tried to focus on the negative space of both the plant and background as well as the ink and non-inked areas. I’m pretty happy with the direction this is moving and hope to clean it up and finish it sometime this week. I have been running alot the last couple weeks, really enjoying it, but I hurt my foot yesterday while hiking in the woods with my youngest, so I might have to take it easy the next couple days to recoup. More drawings coming soon.