Illustrating Nature: A Creative Exploration

Illustrating Nature: A Creative Exploration

“We have reached the end of the course, and I hope you have discovered new and unexpected ways to illustrate taking inspiration from the natural world around us. At the start of this course, I told you something of myself and my route into art and then shared the work of other inspirational artists and illustrators to capture your imagination. I invited you to explore your surroundings with fresh eyes in order that you could warm up your creative mind. Then we began discovering different ways of making marks with ink and unusual tools. I demonstrated watercolour and coloured pencil techniques followed by experimenting using mixed media. I showed you ways to draw nature from life, out on location, and from photos and moving images of living creatures, encouraging ways to loosen up our hands and become playful with our drawing. Finally, I combined many of the techniques we covered on the course to create many, many drawings of plums and birds for my final project, helping me work towards a series of three final pieces using watercolour, ink, and mixed media.

I hope you’ll discover new ways of drawing and unleashing your creativity by permitting yourself the opportunity to play and not worry about making mistakes. Remember that the process of exploring, experimenting, and risk-taking is so much more important than aspiring to a perfect, final piece. This is the aspect where I encourage you to focus your energies, and in my experience is where the best results emerge. Don’t forget that! For my final piece I drew from life the things I had around me and that most inspired me - from a plum tree in my garden. I wanted to combine this with a living creature so I researched fruit-eating birds and discovered the enigmatic Waxwing. There are many other artefacts and living creatures I could have combined and I encourage you to think about what most inspires or excites you and how, in some way, you can draw some elements of this from life - perhaps some ocean wildlife if you live near the sea; your dog out on a walk; or pigeons in your local park. If your three images can link in some way, that is the start of a unified series that works well together as a whole collection. So for now, I’ll say goodbye but I’m really excited to see what you produce if you feel inspired to share your explorations in the forum. We all benefit most when we share results with each other, become inspired by each others’ creations. Like being in a classroom, there is great energy when creative ideas and inspiration bounce between students and teachers too. So please feedback and encourage each other’s work in the forum. It makes a difference to hear from many voices and not just mine. Finally, please be patient: I will comment and respond to your work but it may not always be immediate. I have creative clients I have to see to as well, but I will be in touch - I promise! Bye for now! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final project Now we've reached the end of the course, and I hope you've discovered new and unexpected ways to take inspiration from nature. At the start of the course, I told you about me and my background and what's led me to where I am today and told you about some of my influences and how the natural world inspires my work. Then we experimented with different ways of working with ink, using unusual tools and I showed you some ways of working with watercolour and coloured pencil. Then we explored different mixed media techniques playing with the materials around us and finding new and un...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Illustrating Nature: A Creative Exploration

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (2047)
• 49429 students
• 4 units
• 18 lessons (4h 25m)
• 10 downloads

• Category

  Illustration

• Areas

  Drawing, Ink Illustration, Naturalistic Illustration, Painting, Traditional illustration, Watercolor Painting