Sketchbook Last Chapter 23: Kiku | SpeedPaint

Hello, dear creative community!
Today i will finally share with you the last chapter of this mini Sketchbook. I am very happy to have finished it. Although it didn't have that many pages, it's a real miracle that i managed to complete this mini challenge i set myself. I admit i have enjoyed drawing this way, in notebooks, more than on other surfaces and formats. I feel that sketchbooks give that informal and spontaneous touch that conventional artwork would not normally have.

For this new and final chapter, i felt some pressure to draw something that i really liked. It's normal that we don't like certain drawings in a sketchbook that much, since they are not supposed to be specific, finished works of art, but rather practice and studies. But since this is the last page, i really wanted to do something that was very much in my style and to my taste.

I started sketching a female face and then saw what flowed. I wanted to continue with the theme of the previous drawing, a creature from the floral kingdom, with those delicate, elegant, and feminine touches. I am a big fan of Japanese art and Asian art in general, and i had wanted to do something inspired by that for a long time, so i added elements that reminded me of tattoos. One of the flowers i really like in Japanese tattoo art is the chrysanthemum. I thought it would be interesting to do something similar that would surround her body and neck as if the flower were her dress. The way the petals of this flower curl upward and inward was perfect.

From the beginning, i decided that it would be a complex drawing in terms of lines and details but simple in terms of coloring. That's why black ink would cover most of the drawing, both the outline and the fill.

I didn't want to complicate things too much by choosing lots of colors, so i only used two cool gray alcohol markers, a light one for the background details and a darker one for the skin. As always, i didn't want to use conventional skin tones since my creature is not human. For the rest of the small details, i used a vermilion red marker. I wanted these two colors to predominate, black and red, as they are the traditional colors in this type of art, and i admit that they have been one of my favorite combinations since i was very young. Although it looks very red in the photos, it's actually a bit orangey.

For the finishing touches, i used four colored pencils. A pastel peach pencil and another cream-colored pencil for the skin and for the final details of the flower petals, with a very light gray pencil that was almost white, i added some very fine lines, and a blue one for background details. I was always careful not to overdo it or saturate the drawing with extra colors that would make me lose the peculiar harmony of my drawing.

And that's how this last chapter, number 23, called Kiku (which means Chrysanthemum in Japanese), turned out. It symbolizes beauty, longevity, eternity, wisdom, and purity. Although i have several drawings that i consider my favorites in this mini-series, this one definitely takes the prize. I took the time to record a few short clips of the process. I would always like to be able to do this with all of them, but it takes time, so to say goodbye to this little art book, i definitely had to do it. I really enjoyed this little project. Now i have to start another notebook, but i'm not sure which one, as i have three waiting for me. There's one i had already started, but it's bigger, and in the end, i started filling up this little one. I was thinking of doing another one, but I'm still not sure. I have to make a decision quickly because otherwise i run the risk of procrastinating too much on this, and i can't afford to do that.

And that's it for this blog. Have a happy day and night.😃 ♥️