Garden life 😳🥰🌱

I drew this flattering self portrait last week after a task that made me feel some type of way about gardens… and adulthood!

Just a grown-up dealing with life, nothing to see here.

Tbh I really love being a garden owner. We moved into an old house with an old (and kind of unkempt) garden a little over a year ago.

That means that this is our second summer in the house and we’ve gotten to enjoy all the different days of spring and early summer here.

There’s green everywhere, weeds and flowers and trees and all sorts. These are some of the plants that were already in the garden when we moved in:

  • Magnolia trees
  • Giant poppies
  • A lilac tree
  • Oak trees
  • Cherry trees
  • Hazel bushes
  • Berry bushes: gooseberry, black currants and red currants
  • A very tasty rhubarb
  • Oregano
  • Lavender
  • Loooots of flowers that I don’t know the names of
Just poppin’ up

I also planted some leeks last year that didn’t really turn out. So they’re still there. I think they might flower and produce seeds this year, maybe?!

I’m not a garden expert if you can’t tell.

But I’m a greenery lover! And so is our little 8-month-old. Being an Autumn baby this is her first time experiencing summer in a garden.

She’s simply loving it, constantly smiling, squealing and generally marveling at things outside.

It’s become a tradition for me to let her give the lilac flowers a loving, though not very gentle, squeeze when we pass them.

Our garden definitely doesn’t get enough attention, mainly because of said baby girl – not to mention the old house that also needs some care.

But it’s kind of magical to have all those plants that are there because a previous owner put them there.

That turned out to be quite a positive post about gardens.

I still hate untangling the friggin’ garden hose though!

Garden life 😳🥰🌱

Flower sketches

I thought I’d share these two different doodles. I made a traditional drawing in my sketchbook first, and a couple of days later it inspired a digital doodle of the same cute flower creatures.

Flower sketch made with marker and coloured pencil.
Flower doodle made in Gimp.

I like both doodles, but the digital definitely took longer to make. I tried out a drawing style that looks like it’s drawn with marker on paper.

Using my sketchbook as inspiration for digital drawings is nice. Then I don’t have to think of something to draw, but I can use my energy on trying new colouring techniques. 

When I made the previous post (Orange pepper), I realised that I didn’t have a garden tag on the blog. So now there is one!

Since moving into a house I have plants on my mind a lot of the time. I guess they’re a classic thing to draw, and I’m very bad at drawing leaves and trees and stuff like that. So I’ll probably post more practice doodles of indoor and outdoor green things on here 🙂

Flower sketches

Orange pepper

Gardening is new to me, and I get VERY excited when something new happens with my plants. Sometimes things change colour from one day to the next! So I had to make a drawing about it.

My sister gave me a pepper plant and a tomato plant as a housewarming gift in Spring, and they are both thriving in the greenhouse. There are soooo many fruits!

Colourful fruits

So far, all the peppers have been green, but a couple of days ago one of them turned orange! And it made me a very happy garden owner.

How do they know when to stop growing and start changing colour? It must be some kind of garden magic. Now the challenge is to leave it for a couple more days and see if it turns red. If I don’t eat it before it happens!

Drawing process

Here’s a look at my original hand-drawn sketch from my sketchbook:

I imported it into Gimp, coloured it in and added some layer effects to keep the hand-drawn vibe. I’m happy with the style, it turned out kind of children’s book-ish. Which I think fits the little story well. If you can even call it a story… To me, it’s headline news!

Also, I started work again last week after the summer vacation and today was the first very busy day. So colouring in this little doodle felt very calming and nice.

I’ve been doodling and drawing digitally a lot this summer, and I really want to keep it up as much as possible – even though I use up some of my creative energy at work. Drawing is so good for my mental health, so I need to try to stay in the habit.

Orange pepper