GARDENS AND ILLUSTRATING

An interesting thing has happened to me over the last few years. I've become intrigued with how to combine my love of art and illustration with my love of garden design. I used to keep them very separate.

Of course, garden design is an art, but I want to explore this art beyond creating a beautiful, artful landscape (though I will do that too). How can I use my illustration skills to explore garden design on a different level...really as a craft?

Gardening is a craft in that we manipulate the landscape with our hands to create something lovely, but how can we extend this idea into the art world? Maybe by studying plants to create fabric patterns, choosing fashion industry colors to create new combinations of plants, using the garden for inspiration to learning simplified drawing techniques, as well as, many other ways.

Then there is my whole obsession with simplifying landscape design so I can teach others about it in a fun way. Again, using my illustrations to teach about plants, spatial arrangement, theme development, and food production (I have to pull The Lunch Box Project in here someplace!). I look forward to trying all these things! Most will be right here on this blog, but some of these experiments will take place in my newsletter too.  If you'd like these extra tidbits, just sign up here. Otherwise here we go!